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COFVRIGHT DEPOSIT 



^outl) of 
jFamous Americans 



Kctj. louifli Gilbert ^anfefi, ^.£). 

Author of Heroic Personalities," etc. 




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Cincinnati : Jennings \' piac 



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AUG. 9 1902 


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Copyright by 

EATON & MAINS, 

.1902. 



THE AUTHOR'S WORD 



It has been the object of the writer in pre- 
paring these sketches to deal only with the 
youth of the distinguished people whose biog- 
raphies have been under search. With the 
great work of their lives this book has nothing 
to do. The author has sought only to put 
before the mind of the reader a comprehensive 
and entertaining picture of- that peculiarly in- 
teresting period which precedes the great work 
of every successful career. It is the period 
when education is received, when original 
genius begins to manifest itself, and when 
character is being developed and crystallized 
in the preliminary struggles of life. Every 
available nook that might have information 
in it has been sought out, and in many cases a 
number of biographies have been consulted and 
compared. For one thing the author believes 
he deserves credit, in that he has absolutely 
resisted all temptations to point the moral, 
or preach the sermon, which these youthful 
struggles have often given him desire to do. 
'I'he reader has before him the picture and the 
story, and must read into them his own lesson. 
I.OUIS Albert Banks. 

New York City, April 24, 1902. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Gkorgk Washington 11 

Benjamin Franklin 21 

John Quincy Adams. . .* . « o 31 

Thomas Jefferson 41 

Patrick Henry 51 

Daniel Webster 63 » 

Henry Clay 73 

Andrew Jackson 83 

Pocahontas 93 

John James Audubon 103 

Washington Irving 113 

Wendell Phillips 121 

William Cullen Bryant 131 

Gilbert Stuart 139 

Robert Fulton \4l 

Samuel F. B. Morse 157 



6 Contents 

PAGE 

Hiram Powers I(i5 

Matthew Simpson 175 

Harriet Beecher Stowe 187 

Lydia Huntly Sigourney, . . . „ , 195 

George Peabody 203 

Horace Greeley 213 

Julia Ward Howe 223 

Henry Wads worth Longfellow 233 

John Greenleaf Whittier 243 

Abraham Lincoln 253 

Ulysses S. Grant 265 

Robert Edward Lee 275 

William McKinley 285 

Frances Willard 295 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 

Gkorge Washington 10 

Benjamin Franklin 20 "^ 

.John Quincy Adams oO - 

Thomas Jefferson 40 

Patrick Henry >. . . 50 

Daniel Webster 62 y 

Henry Clay 72 

Andreav Jackson 82 

Pocahontas 92 " 

John James Audubon 102 - 

Washington Irving 112 ^' 

Wendell Phillips 120 

William Cullen Bryant 130 ^ 

Samuel P. B. Morse 15H 

Matthew Simpson 1*74 

Harriet Beecher Stowe 1 Sfi 



8 List of Illustrations 

PACiK 

(iKOKGE PkABODY , , 202 

lloRACK Grkelev o . . . 212 

Julia Ward Howe 222 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 2'S'l 

John Greenleaf Whittier , . 242 

Abraham Lincoln 252 

Ulysses S. Grant 264 

Robert Edward Lee 2*74 

William McKinley 284 

Frances Willard 294 




c;I'Orc;f w a^hixc. ro\ 



YOUTH OF 
FAMOUS AMERICANS 



GEORGE WASHINGTON 

Augustine Washington was the owner of 
large estates in Virginia, and removed to the 
one on the Rappahannock River but a short 
time before his son George, who was to give 
unfading glory to the name, was born. It was 
in the home on this estate that George Wash- 
ington received his early training. He was not 
destined to be greatly indebted to schools and" 
schoolmasters. His father was a great friend 
of education, and had sent his eldest son, Law- 
rence, to England to be educated, and purposed 
the same for George. But the father died 
before the younger boy was old enough to 
leave home on such a journey. George was 
now left to the guardianship of his mother. 
There has been so much debate among the 
biographers as to the merits of Mary Washing- 
ton that one has to walk with careful feet. 
This much seems to have been true beyond 



12 Youth of Famous Americans 

question, that she was a woman of good eoin- 
luon sense, of simplicity of character, and 
abounded in the plain household virtues. 

The instruction of Washington at home was 
good and pure. He was early taught the rudi- 
ments of learning, in what was then called a 
"field school," by a village schoolmaster who 
rejoiced in the name of Hobby. This man 
was one of his father's tenants, and joined 
the profession of schoolmaster with the more 
melancholy business of sexton. It is not 
probable that George learned very much in 
that school, as the old schoolmaster had a 
habit of getting drunk whenever one of his 
pupils had a birthday. But the teaching at 
home was of a better sort. In addition to the 
Scriptures, in which he was daily taught, he 
read and pondered Sir Matthew Hale's Con- 
templations, Moral and Divine — a great book 
which told the secret of a great man's worth 
and success. This very volume, out of which 
Washington was taught by his mother, is still 
preserved at Mount Vernon. 

He was next intrusted to a Mr. Williams, 
whose school he attended from the home of 
his brother, and from whom he learned a 
knowledge of accounts, in which he was always 
skillful. He also studied under Williams 
geometry, trigonometry, and surveying, in 
which he became an adept, writing out his 
examples in the neatest and most careful man- 



George Washington 13 

ner. All the school instruction which Wash- 
ington ever received was thus completed before 
he was sixteen. 

On leaving school young Washington ap- 
pears to have taken up his residence with his 
brother at Mount Vernon, where he was intro- 
duced to new social influences of a liberal 
character in the family society of the Fair- 
faxes. Lawrence was married to a daughter 
of William Fairfax, a gentleman of much ex- 
perience and adventure about the world, who 
resided at his neighboring seat, "Belvoir," on 
the Potomac, and superintended, as agent, the 
large landed operations of his cousin. Lord 
Fairfax. Surveys were to be made to keep 
possession of the lands and bring them into 
the market; and who so well adapted for this 
service as the youth who had made the science 
an object of special study? We consequently 
tiud him regularly retained in this service. 
His journal, at the age of sixteen, remains to 
tell us of the duties and adventures of the 
journey, as he traversed the outlying rough 
ways and passages of the South Branch of the 
Potomac. It is a short record of camp inci- 
dents and the progress of his surveys for a 
month in the wilderness, in the spring of 1748, 
the prelude, in its introduction to Indians and 
the exposures of camp life, to many rougher 
scenes of military service stretching westward 
from the region. 



14 Youth of Famous Americans 

Three' years were passed in expeditions of 
this nature, the young surveyor making his 
home in the intervals of duty mostly at Mount 
Vernon. The health of his brother, the owner 
of this place, to whom he was much attached, 
was now failing with consumption, and George 
accompanied him in one of his tours for health, 
in the autumn of 1751, to Barbados. As 
usual, he kept a journal of his observations, 
which tells us of the everyday living and hos- 
pitalities of the place, with a shrewd glance at 
its agricultural resources and the conduct of 
its governor. A few lines cover nearly a 
month of the visit; they record an attack of 
the smallpox, of which his countenance always 
bore some faint traces. Leaving his brother, 
partially recruited, to pursue his way to Ber- 
muda, George returned in February to Vir- 
ginia. The health of Lawrence, however, con- 
tinued to decline, and in the ensuing summer 
he died at Mount Vernon. The estate was left 
to a daughter, who died in infancy, the prop- 
erty then passing, according to the terms of the 
will, into the possession of George, who thus 
became the owner of his memorable home. 

Previous to this time rumors of imminent 
French and Indian aggressions on the frontier 
began to engage the attention of the colony, 
and preparations were making to beat back 
the threatened invasion. The province was 
divided into districts for enlistment and or- 



George Washington 15 

j^anization of the militia, over one of whicli 
George Washington was placed, with the rank 
of major. This was in 1751, when he was but 
nineteen years old, and was a mark of con- 
fidence scarcely justified by his youthful 
studies and experience, but in which his family 
influence, no doubt, had its full share. It was 
his habit to pay a good deal of attention to 
military exercises at Mount Vernon, and he 
had two friends. Adjutant Ware, a Virginian, 
and a Dutchman, Jacob Van Braani, who gave 
him lessons in fencing, and put him through 
other military evolutions. Both of these men 
had been military companions of his broth- 
er, Lawrence Washington, while in the West 
Indies. 

In 1753, the year following his brother's 
death, the affairs on the frontier becoming 
pressing. Governor Dinwiddle stood in need 
of a clear-headed and resolute agent to bear a 
message to the French commander on the Ohio 
River, voicing the remonstrance of the English 
colonists against the advancing occupation of 
the territory. It was a most hazardous under- 
taking, as to reach the French post the messen- 
ger must cross a rough, mountainous wil- 
derness occupied by savage and unfriendly 
Indians. There could have been no higher 
compliment paid to Washington than in his 
selection for the dangerous duty. Provided 
with instructions, he left Williamsburg, Va., 



16 Youth of Famous Americans 

on his important mission, on the hist day of 
October, and by the middle of November 
reached the extreme frontier settlement at 
Will's Creek; thence, with his little party of 
eight, he pursued his way to the forks of 
the Ohio, where, with a military eye, he noted 
the advantageous position subsequently se- 
lected as the site of Fort Duquesne, and now 
the flourishing city of Pittsburg. He then 
held a council with the Indians at Logstown, 
and procured guides to the station of the 
French commandant, a hundred and twenty 
miles distant, in the vicinity of Lake Erie, 
which he reached on the 11th of Decem- 
ber. An interview having been obtained, the 
message delivered, and an answer received, the 
most hazardous part of the expedition yet lay 
before the party in their return home. They 
were exposed to frozen streams, the winter 
storms, the perils of the wilderness, and Indian 
hostilities, at a time when Indian hostilities 
meant the quick use of the scalping-knife and 
the awful tortures of the stake. To hasten his 
homeward journey, Washington separated 
from the rest, with a single companion. His 
life was more than once in danger on the way. 
On one occasion an Indian took deliberate aim 
at him and fired at short range, but the gun 
missed fire. At another time, while crossing 
the Allegheny Kiver during a stormy night, 
the raft was beset with ice, and for a while 



George Washington 17 

it did not seem possible that either himself or 
his companion would ever reach land. Escap- 
ing these disasters, he reached Williamsburg 
on the 16th of January, and gave a most in- 
teresting report of his remarkable trip. It 
was at once published by the governor, and 
was speedily reprinted in London. From that 
day George Washington was a factor to be 
reckoned with when summing up American 
resources. 




lENJAMlN FRANKLIX 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 

If when you are in Boston you will hunt up 
the old town register, and the ancient record 
books of the Old South Church, you will hud 
that Benjamin Franklin was born on a Sunday 
in the year 1706. Boston was a good deal 
smaller then than it is now, and the Franklin 
family resided on Milk Street, directly oppo- 
site the Old South Church, and not more than 
sixty feet away from the church door. The 
father carried the newborn son across the 
street that same Sunday afternoon, and a cer- 
tain Dr. Willard, pastor at the time, baptized 
him. 

When the boy was five years old occurred 
the great fire of Boston, w^hich laid the heart 
of the town in ruins, and, while no harm befell 
the home of the Franklins, it made a deep 
impression on the future philosopher's mind. 

One incident of Franklin's childhood is 
familiar to all the world. "When I was a 
child of seven years old," he wrote, sixty-six 
years after the event, "my friends, on a holi- 
day, filled my pockets with coppers. I went 
directly to a shop where they sold toys for chil- 
dren, and being charmed with the sound of a 
whistle that I met by the way in the hands of 



22 Youth of Famous Americans 

another boy I vohiiitarily ottered and gave all 
my money for one. 1 then eame home, and 
went whistling all over the house, much 
pleased with my whistle, but disturbing all the 
family. My brothers and sisters and cousins, 
understanding the bargain I had made, told 
me I had given four times as much as it was 
worth; put me in mind what good things I 
might have bought with the rest of the money, 
and laughed at me so much for my folly that 
I cried with vexation, and the reflection gave 
me more chagrin than the whistle gave me 
pleasure. This, however, was afterward of use 
to me, the impression continuing on my mind ; 
so that often, when I was tempted to buy some 
unnecessary thing, I said to myself, 'Don't 
give too much for the ivhistle;' and I saved my 
money." 

As Franklin grew older he took to the water 
like a Newfoundland dog. He became an adept 
in the management of boats, and was the best 
swimmer around Boston Harbor. He had two 
feats of which he was specially proud. In a 
letter to one of his philosophic friends, late in 
life, he writes : 

"When I was a boy I made two pallets, each 
about ten inches long and six broad, with a 
hole for the thumb in order to retain it fast in 
the palm of my hand ; they much resembled a 
painter's palette; in swimming I pushed the 
edges of these forward, and I struck the water 



Benjamin Franklin 23 

with their flat surfaces as I drew them back. 
I remember I swam faster by means of these 
pallets, but they fatigued my wrists, I also 
fitted to the soles of my feet a kind of sandals ; 
but I was not satisfied with them, because 1 
observed that the stroke is partly given by the 
inside of the feet and ankles, and not entirely 
with the soles of the feet." 

Young Franklin was a most devouring 
reader. The first book he ever owned was Bun- 
yan's Pilgrim's Progress, with which he fell 
greatly in love, and almost completely ab- 
sorbed both the matter and style. Then he sold 
his Pilgrim's Progress in order to buy Burton's 
Historical Colleciions, in forty little volumes, 
which were very famous in their day. These 
books contained history, travels, adventures, 
fiction, natural history, biography, and every- 
thing curious and marvelous which the com- 
piler could discover. 

Benjamin Franklin was brought up reli- 
giously. Regular attendance at the Old South 
Church was required of him and of all his 
brothers and sisters. There he once heard 
preach old Increase Mather, the father of Cot- 
ton Mather, and heard him in the course of his 
sermon refer to the death "of that wicked old 
persecutor of God's people, Louis XIV." There, 
too, he frequently heard Cotton Mather while 
he was in the vigor of his great powers. Josiah 
Franklin, father of young Benjamin, was too 



24 Youth of Famous Americans 

good-humored and iiitelhgeiit a man to be an 
ascetic or a bigot. While sincerely religious, 
his was a genial nature which lived on the 
sunshiny side of his religion. There is an 
anecdote of Franklin and his father, told by 
the grandson of Benjamin Franklin, which 
would indicate that Josiah and his children 
lived on easy terms with one another, and that, 
whatever may have occurred to others, the 
Franklin children did not find their young 
lives cramped or embittered by any exactions 
or terrors of the ancient Puritanism. The 
boy, we are told, found the long graces used 
by his father before and after meals very tedi- 
ous. One day, after the winter's provisions had 
been salted, Benjamin said to his father, "I 
think, father, if you were to say grace over 
the whole cask, once for all, it would be a vast 
saving of time." 

Franklin spent a very happy boyhood, and 
his heart cherished Boston as long as he lived. 
When he was eighty-two years old he spoke of 
it as "that beloved place," which assures us 
that it was a happy and joyous boyhood which 
he remembered. 

Benjamin was bound out as a printer in his 
brother's shop when he was twelve years old. 
He bound himself to serve his brother as an 
apprentice until he was twenty-one, a period 
of nine years, but during the last year he was 
to be allowed the wages of a journeyman. 



Benjamin Franklin 25 

There are some very striking stateiiieiits in that 
old paper, which is still preserved. For in- 
stance, I find these sentences : "Taverns, inns, 
or alehouses he shall not haunt. At cards, 
dice, tables, or any other unlawful game he 
shall not play. Matrimony he shall not con- 
tract; nor from the service of his said master 
day nor night absent himself." 

Benjamin liked his new occupation not too 
well, but it was better than cutting candle 
wicks and ladling melted grease, which seemed 
to be the only thing else open to him. He went 
at it with earnestness and pluck, determined 
to learn his business, and he soon became use- 
ful to his brother. His love of books grew 
with the years; and though Benjamin had no 
money to buy books he borrowed on every 
opportunity, and often sat up in his bedroom 
reading the greater part of the night, when the 
book borrowed in the evening had to be re- 
turned in the morning. One day a merchant 
of Boston, Matthew Adams, coming into the 
printing office, iioticed him reading at an odd 
moment, took a fancy to him, and invited him 
to see his library, and lent him books. 

In 172r) Benjamin Franklin quarreled with 
his brother, and feeling that he was cruelly 
treated, determined to run away. He went by 
sea. One day, when the sloop on which he had 
sailed was becalmed off Block Island, the 
sailors amused themselves by fishing for cod. 



26 Youth of Famous Americans 

Benjamin, who still adhered to his vegetarian 
theory, regarded the taking of life for the sake 
of procuring food as murder. Fishing, in par- 
ticular, was murder unprovoked; for no one 
could contend that these cod, which the sailors 
kept hauling up over the sloop's bulwarks and 
slapping down upon the deck, had wrought 
any harm to their captors. This argument, 
so long as the mere catching continued, seemed 
unanswerable; but when, by and by, the cod 
began to send forth a more alluring odor from 
the frying pan, the tempted vegetarian, who 
had formerly been extremely fond of fish, 
found it necessary to go over his reasoning 
again to see if there was not a flaw in it. He 
was so unhappy as not to be able to find one, 
and for some minutes there was a struggle 
between principle and inclination. It occurred 
to him, at length, that when the fish were 
opened he had seen smaller fish in their 
stomachs. "If you eat one another," said he 
to himself, "I don't see why we may not eat 
you." So he dined upon cod very heartily, 
and continued afterward to eat what other 
people ate. Telling the story later, he re- 
marked, "So convenient a thing it is to be a 
reasonable creature, since it enables one to find 
or make a reason for everything one has in 
mind to do." 

Not finding employment in New York, Ben- 
jamin footed it to within seventeen miles of 



Benjamin Franklin 27 

Philadelphia, when he was taken on board a 
boat by a fricMidly erew, and given a lift to the 
city, lie arrived on Sunday. lie knew no 
one in the eity, and he had one silver dollar and 
a shilling in coppers. The boatmen refused to 
take anj^thing for his passage, as he had helped 
them to row the boat ; but he insisted on their 
taking all his copper coin. "A man," he re- 
marks after relating this incident, "is some- 
times more generous when he has a little 
money than when he has plenty — perhaps to 
prevent his being thought to have but little." 

As Benjamin walked up into the town, gaz- 
ing about him, he met a boy with bread. He 
asked the boy wdiere he had bought it, and went 
to the shop and asked for a threepenny loaf, 
but the baker had none. Then he asked for 
threepence worth of bread of any kind, and was 
surprised to receive three puffy rolls of a mag- 
nitude that seemed to him out of all proportion 
to the price. Having no room in his pockets, 
he walked off with a roll under each arm, and 
eating a third. As he went up Market Street 
he passed by the house of Mr. Read, whose 
blooming daughter, Deborah, a bright girl of 
eighteen, stood at the door wondering and 
smiling at his ridiculous appearance. Little 
did either dream then that Deborah Read was 
to be his future wife. The next day Franklin 
obtained employment in a printing oiRce, and 
wrought steadilv on toward a great career. 




JOHN (JUIXCY ADAMS 



JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 

The youth of John Quiney Adams is very 
unique, and is certainly without a parallel in 
American history. Edward Everett, the fa- 
mous orator, said that there was no such stage, 
as that of boyhood in his life. His father, the 
great John Adams, was one of the most dis- 
tinguished men of the New World, and there 
have been few women more worthy to bear 
great sons than his noble mother. Almost from 
his babyhood young John Quincy's mind 
scH'med largely given up to literature and state 
affairs. Imagine a boy nine years old writing 
tliis letter to his father : 

"Braintree^ June 2, 1777. 
''Dear Sir : I love to receive letters very 
well; much better than I love to write them. 
1 make but a poor figure at composition. My 
head is much too fickle. My thoughts are run- 
ning after birds' eggs, play, and trifles, till I 
get vexed with myself. Mamma has a trouble- 
some task to keep me a -studying. I own I am 
ashamed of myself. I have just entered the 
third volume of Rollin's History, but designed 
to have got half through with it by this time. 
T nm determined this week to be more diligent. 



32 Youth of Famous Americans - 

Mr. Tliaxter is absent at court. 1 liave set 
myself a stint this week, to read the third 
volume half out. If I can but keep my resolu- 
tion, I may again at the end of the week give 
a better account of myself. I wish, sir, you 
would give me in writing, some instructions 
with regard to the use of my time, and advise 
me how to proportion my studies and play, 
and I will keep them by me, and endeavor to 
follow them. 

"With the present determination of growing 
better, 1 am, dear sir, 

''Your son, 

''John Quincy Adams. 

"P. S.— Sir: If you will be so good as to 
favor me with a blank book, I will transcribe 
the most remarkable passages I meet with in 
my reading, which -will serve to fix them upon 
my mind." 

On the lP>th of February, 1778, John Adams 
sailed for France as one of the commissioners 
from this country to secure French recogni- 
tion, and he decided to take John Quincy, who, 
having been born in 1767, was then in his 
eleventh year, with him. Thus began an edu- 
cation the advantages of which were perhaps 
never afforded to any other American youth. 
On the eve of embarkation his father, writing 
home to his mother, adds this postscript: 
"Johnny sends his dutj^ to his mamma, and his 



John Quincy Adams 33 

love to his sisters and brothers. He behaves 
like a man." That last sentence, "He behaves 
like a man," seems to have been characteristic 
of him from his earliest years. 

Young Adams and his father were abroad a 
year and a half, and during that period the 
future President attended a public school in 
Paris, while during- his leisure hours he had 
the benefit of conversation with such men as 
John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and many 
other eminent and distinguished men by 
whom his father was surrounded. The im- 
provement of the boy during his sojourn 
abroad is mentioned by John Adams in a let- 
ter home in words that would make any good 
boy's heart exult with pride. The father 
writes : 

"My son has had a great opportunity to see 
this country, but this has unavoidably retarded 
his education in some other things. He has 
enjoyed perfect health from first to last, and 
is respected wherever he goes, for his vigor and 
vivacity, both of mind and body; for his con- 
stant good humor, and for his rapid progress 
in French, as well as in general knowledge, 
which, for his age, is uncommon." 

John Adams had not been home long before 
Congress sent him as a minister to the court of 
St. James to insist on the independence of the 
TTnited States, and John Quincy, now twelve 
years old, returned with him. The frignto on 
8 



34 Youth of Famous Americans 

which they sailed spranjj,- a leak, and was 
obliged to put into the port nearest at hand, 
which proved to be Ferrol, in Spain. They 
disembarked on the 11th day of December, and 
traversed the intervening- distance to Paris 
overland, a journey of a thousand miles. This 
journey was performed through the mountains 
on mules, and I have no doubt was a great joy 
to the young American lad. 

In July, 1781, Francis Dana, who had at- 
tended John Adams as secretary of legation, 
was appointed minister to Russia. John 
Quincy Adams, then fourteen years old, was 
appointed private secretary of this mission. 
He remained at this post fourteen months, per- 
forming its duties with entire satisfaction to 
the American minister. The singular ripeness 
of the youthful secretary was shown in his 
traveling alone, on his return from St. Peters- 
burg, by a journey leisurely made and filled 
with observations of Sweden, Denmark, Ham- 
burg, and Bremen. On arriving in Holland he 
resumed his studies at The Hague. In 1783, 
when John Quincy was now nearly sixteen, 
his father, writing home to the mother, says 
of him: "Our son is at The Hague, pursuing 
his studies with great ardor. They give him 
a good character wherever he has been, and I 
hope he will make a good man." 

After concluding the treaty of peace John 
Adams, together with Franklin and Jay, was 



John Quincy Adams 35 

charged with the duty of negotiating a treaty 
of commerce with Great Britain, and Jolni 
Adams, taking his son John Quincy with him, 
proceeded to London, and took up his residence 
at the British court. In June, 1784, heart- 
weary with the long absence, Mrs. Adams em- 
barked for P]ngland to join her husband and 
son. It must have been a happy meeting, for 
they were greatly devoted to each other. 

The next year, in 1785, John Quincy Adams 
became fearful that the full duties of manhood 
would devolve upon him without his having 
completed the necessary academic studies. He 
therefore obtained leave to return home, at the 
age of eighteen years, and entered Cambridge 
University, known to us now as Harvard, at 
an advanced standing in 1786. He graduated 
in 1788 with high honors. 

After his graduation from college young- 
Adams settled down to study and practice law. 
Then ensued several years of humdrum wait- 
ing, which was by no means pleasant to the 
young man. In his diary are found some para- 
graphs written May 16, 1792, which are very 
significant : 

"I am not satisfied with the manner in which 
T employ my time. It is calculated to keep me 
forever fixed in that state of useless and dis- 
graceful insignificancy which has been my lot 
for some years past. At an age bearing close 
upon twenty-five, when many of the characters 



36 Youth of Famous Americans 

who were bom for the benefit of their fellow- 
creature's have rendered themselves conspicu- 
ous among their contemporaries, and founded 
a reputation upon which their memory re- 
mains, and will continue to the latest posterity 
— at that period I still find myself as obscure, 
as unknown to the world, as the most indolent 
or the most stupid of human beings. In the 
walks of active life I have done nothing. For- 
tune, indeed, who claims to herself a large pro- 
portion of the merit which exhibits to public 
view the talents of professional men at an early 
period of their lives, has not hitherto been 
peculiarly indulgent to me. But if to my own 
mind I inquire whether I should, at this time, 
be qualified to receive and derive any benefit 
which it may be in her power to procure for 
me, my own mind would shrink from the in- 
vestigation. My heart is not conscious of an 
unworthy ambition, nor of a desire to estab- 
lish either fame or honor or fortune upon any 
other foundation than that of desert, but it is 
conscious — and the consideration is equally 
painful and humiliating — it is conscious that 
the ambition is constant and unceasing, while 
the exertions to acquire the talents which 
ought alone to secure the reward of ambition 
are feeble, indolent, frequently interrupted, 
and never pursued w^ith an ardor equivalent 
to its purposes. My future fortunes in life are, 
therefore, the objects of my present specula- 



John Quincy Adams 37 

tioii, and it may be proper for me to reflect 
further upon the same subject, and if j)ossible 
to adopt some resolutions which may enable 
me, as Uncle Toby Shandy said of his minia- 
ture sieges, to answer the great ends of my 
existence." 

A few months later a letter from John 
Adams, who was then Vice President of the 
United States, to his wife, showed that the 
father was having thoughts of the same sort 
concerning his son's career. In the letter he 
speaks of some young man whom he thought 
to be too self -pushing, but immediately after- 
ward adds : "I wish, however, that my boys had 
a little more of his activity. I must soon treat 
them as the pigeons treat their squabs — push 
them off the limb, and make them put out their 
wings or fall. Young pigeons will never fly 
till this is done." 

It was not long until the young pigeon be- 
gan to fly, A little over a year after the frank 
heart-searching comment in the young man's 
diary, and the half -playful, half -serious letter 
of the father, John Quincy Adams was ap- 
pointed minister to Holland, and began the 
flight that was always upward and onward, 
and ever full of honor to himself and to his 
country. 




THOMAS JEFFERSON' 



THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Peter Jefferson^ the father of Thomas Jef- 
ferson, belonged to a Welsh family, and settled 
on a plantation in Albemarle County, Va. He 
married Jane Randolph, of the eminent old 
Virginia family. She is described as being 
"possessed of a most amiable and affectionate 
disposition, a lively, cheerful temper, and a 
great fund of humor," qualities which had 
their influence upon her son's character. 

Peter Jefferson, the father, was a model man 
for a frontier settlement, tall in stature, of 
extraordinary strength of body, capable of en- 
during any fatigue in the wilderness, with 
corresponding health and vigor of mind. He 
was educated as a surveyor, and in this capac- 
ity engaged in a government commission to 
draw the boundary line between Virginia and 
North Carolina. 

When Peter Jefferson died, which he did 
when his son was only fourteen years of age, 
he left two injunctions regarding Thomas : 
one, that he should receive a classical educa- 
tion; the other, that he should never be per- 
mitted to neglect the physical exercises neces- 
sary for health and strength. Of these dying 
commands Thomas Jefferson often spoke with 



42 Youth of Famous Americans 

gratitude; and he used to say that if he were 
obliged to choose between the education and 
the estate which his father gave him he would 
choose the education. 

Thomas was early sent to school, and before 
his father's death had been instructed in the 
elements of Greek and Latin and French by 
Mr. Douglass, a Scottish clergyman. His 
father's death left Jefferson his own master. 
In one of his later letters he says: "At four- 
teen years of age the whole care and direction 
of myself were thrown on myself entirely, 
without a relative or a friend qualified to 
advise or guide me." 

The first use that young Jefferson made of 
his liberty was to change his school, and to 
become a pupil of the Rev. James Maury, an 
excellent clergyman and scholar of Huguenot 
descent, who had recently settled in Albemarle 
County. With him he continued for two years, 
studying Greek and Latin, and becoming 
noted, as one of his classmates afterward re- 
ported, for scholarship, industry, and shyness. 
He was at this time a good runner, a keen 
fox-hunter, and a bold and graceful rider. 

At the age of sixteen, in the spring of 1760, 
he set out on horseback for Williamsburg, the 
capital of Virginia, where he proposed to enter 
the college of William and Mary. Up to this 
time he had never seen a town, or even a vil- 
lage, except the hamlet of Charlottesville, 



Thomas Jefferson 43 

which was about four miles from Slia<hvell, as 
his country estate was called. 

Williamsburg', the seat of the college, was 
then anything- but a scholastic hermitage for 
the mortification of youth. In winter, during 
the session of the court and the sittings of 
the colonial Legislature, it was the focus of 
provincial fashion and gayety ; and between 
study and dissipation the ardent young Jeffer- 
son had before him the old problem of good 
and evil not always leading to the choice 
of virtue. It is to the credit of his manly 
perceptions and healthy tastes, even then, that, 
while he freely partook of the amusements in- 
cidental to his station and time of life, he 
kept his eye steadily on loftier things. "It 
was my great good fortune," he says in his 
Autobiography, "and what probably fixed the 
destinies of my life, that Dr. William Small, 
of Scotland, was then professor of mathe- 
matics, a man profound in most of the useful 
branches of science, with a happy talent of 
communication, correct and gentlemanly man- 
ners, and an enlarged and liberal mind." His 
instructions, communicated not only in college 
hours, but in familiar personal intimacy, 
warmed the young student with his first, as it 
became his constant, passion for natural 
science. This happy instructor also gave a 
course of lectures in ethics and rhetoric, which 
wen^ dou])tless equally profitable to his young 



44 Youth of Famous Americans 

])upil ill the opening of his mind to knowledge. 
He had also an especial fondness for mathe- 
matics, "reading off its processes with the 
facility of common discourse." He sometimes 
studied, in his second year, fifteen hours a 
day, taking exercise in a brisk walk of a mile 
at evening. 

Thomas Jefferson was only two years in col- 
lege, but he was a tremendous worker. James 
Parton, one of his best biographers, says of 
him : 

"Thomas Jefferson became one of the best 
educated men who ever lived in America. His 
mind and his body were equally nourished and 
developed. He was one of the best riders in a 
State where every man was a rider as a matter 
of course. He was an accomplished performer 
on the violin. Having a strong aptitude for 
mathematics, he became a proficient in that 
science, both in the theory and the practice. 
In addition to the knowledge of Latin and 
Greek, which so diligent a student could not 
fail to acquire in college, he afterward added 
a familiar knowledge of French, a considerable 
acquaintance with Italian and Spanish, and 
some knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon. I think 
it is safe to say that, of all the public men who 
have figured in the United States, he was in- 
comparably the best scholar, and the most 
variously accomplished man. 

"Upon the completion of his college course 



Thomas Jefferson 45 

he stutlied law for live years, with an assiduity 
most unusual in the heir to a good estate. He 
had a clock in his bedroom, and his rule in 
summer was to get up as soon as he could see 
the hands, and in winter he rose uniformly at 
five. Including the time passed in music and 
reading, he usually spent fourteen hours of 
every day at his studies; three of which, he 
tells us, were sometimes spent in practicing on 
the violin. There has seldom been a young 
man of fortune who lived more purely than he. 
He neither practiced the vices nor indulged 
the passions of his class in the Virginia of 
that day. He never quarreled; he never gam- 
bled. His mouth was innocent of tobacco. He 
never drank to excess. Occupied continually 
in the improvement of his mind, except when 
he indulged in manly and innocent recreations, 
he appears to have led an absolutely stainless 
life. The American Democrat can point to 
the life of the apostle of his political creed and 
boast that his conduct was as admirable as his 
intelligence was commanding." 

Many years later Thomas Jefferson wrote a 
letter to his grandson telling him of his school 
days in Williamsburg, in which he says: 

"When I recollect the various sorts of bad 
company with which I associated from time 
to time I am astonished I did not turn off with 
some of them and become as worthless to 
society as they were. But I had the good for-. 



46 Youth of Famous Americans 

tune to become acquainted, very early, with 
some characters of very high standing, and to 
feel the incessant wish that I could ever be- 
come what they were. Under temptations and 
difficulties I would ask myself, What would 
Dr. Small, Mr. Wythe, Peyton Randolph do in 
this situation ? What course in it would assure 
me their approbation? I am certain that this 
mode of deciding on my conduct tended more 
to correctness than any reasoning powers that 
I possessed." 

When Jefferson returned from college, 
though still a very young man, he was at the 
head of a great estate on which were employed 
hundreds of negro slaves. How he treated the 
blacks may be gathered from a story told by 
his superintendent of a slave named Jim who 
had been caught stealing nails from the nail 
factory : "When Mr. Jefferson came I sent for 
Jim, and I never saw any person, white or 
black, feel as badly as he did when he saw his 
master. The tears streamed down his face, 
and he begged for pardon over and over again. 
I felt very badly myself. Mr. Jefferson turned 
to me, and said, 'Ah, sir, we can't punish him. 
He has suffered enough already.' He then 
talked to him, gave him a heap of good advice, 
and sent him to the shop. Jim said: 'Well, 
T'se been a-seeking religion a long time, but 
I never heard anything before that sounded 
so, or made me feel so, as I did when master 



Thomas Jefferson 47 

said, "Go, and don't do so any more." And 
now I'se determined to seek religion till I find 
it;' and, sure enough, he afterward came to me 
for a permit to go and be baptized. He was 
always a good servant afterward." 




PATRICK HENRY 



PATRICK HENRY 

Patrick Henry was the son of Colonel John 
Plenry, who was also the presiding magistrate 
of Hanover County, Va. Until Patrick was 
ten years of age he was sent to school in the 
neighborhood near his home, where he learned 
to read and write and a little of arithmetic. 
He was then taken home, and under the direc- 
tion of his father, who had opened a grammar 
school in his own house, he learned a little 
Latin and Greek. Under his father's instruc- 
tion, he became quite proficient in mathe- 
matics, the only branch of education for w^hich 
he seemed to care anything in early youth. 

During these years Patrick Henry was more 
noted for idleness than anything else, exceiit 
that he w^as passionately fond of the sports of 
the field. Whenever it was possible he was in 
the forest with his gun, or over the brook with 
his angle-rod. Some of his schoolmates used 
to follow him, unknown by him, to find out 
wliat it was that gave him so much happiness. 
Sometimes they would find him lying alone 
under the shade of some tree that overhung 
the quiet stream, watching, for hours, at tlu^ 
same spot, the motionless cork of his fishing 
line, without one encouraging symptom of sue- 



52 Youth of Famous Americans 

cess, and without any apparent "source of en- 
joyment, unless he could find it in the stillness 
of the scene and the silent workings of his own 
imagination. 

This love of solitude, in his youth, was often 
observed. Even when hunting with a party his 
choice was not to join the noisy band that 
drove the deer; he preferred to take his stand 
alone, where he might wait for the passing- 
game, and indulge himself, meanwhile, in the 
luxury of thinking. Not that he was averse 
to society; on the contrary, he had, at times, 
a very high zest for it. But even in society 
his enjoyments while young were of a very 
peculiar cast ; he did not mix in the wild 
mirth of his equals in age, but sat, quiet and 
demure, taking no part in the conversation, 
giving no responsive smile to the circulating- 
jests, but lost, to all appearance, in silence and 
abstraction. This abstraction, however, was 
only apparent ; for on the dispersion of the 
company, when interrogated by his parents 
as to what had been passing, he was able, not 
only to detail the conversation, but to sketch, 
with strict fidelity, the character of every 
speaker. 

Not one of the companions of Patrick Henry 
could recollect in after years a single incident 
of premature wit, or striking sentiment, or 
flash of fancy, or remarkable beauty or 
strength of expression; and could recall no 



Patrick Henry 53 

indications, however slight, either of that im- 
passioned love of liberty, or of that adventur- 
ous daring and intrepidity, which marked so 
strongly his future character. 

His person is represented as having been 
coarse, his manners uncommonly awkward, his 
dross slovenly, his conversation very plain, his 
aversion to study invincible, and his faculties 
almost entirely benumbed by indolence. No 
persuasions could bring him either to read or 
to work. On the contrary, he ran wild in the 
forest, like one of the wild Indians of the coun- 
try, and divided his life between the dissipation 
and uproar of the chase and the languor of 
inaction. 

His propensity to observe and comment 
upon the character of the people whom he met 
was the only striking thing to his advantage 
discovered about him in his early youth. This 
propensity seems to have been born with him 
and to have exerted itself, instinctively, the 
moment that a new subject was presented to 
his view. Its action was incessant, and it be- 
came, at length, almost the only intellectual 
exercise in which he seemed to take delight. 
His eloquent biographer, William Wirt, de- 
clares that to this cause may be traced that 
consummate knowledge of the human heart 
which he finally attained, and which enabled 
him, when he came upon the public stage, to 
touch the springs of passion with a mastf^r 



54 Youth of Famous Americans 

hand, and to control the resolutions and deci- 
sions of his hearers with a power almost more 
than mortal, lie was a child of nature, given 
Shakespeare's genius and bidden like Shakes- 
peare to depend on that alone. 

When Patrick was fifteen years old his 
father placed him as a clerk behind the counter 
of a country merchant, and a year later pur- 
chased a small stock of goods and set his two 
sons, William and Patrick, up in trade. Wil- 
liam was even lazier than Patrick, and so the 
store did not get on well. He was so easy- 
going that he credited everybody that came 
along, and soon had a great many bad debts. 
Besides, he was continually wanting to go 
hunting and fishing, and the store was a prison 
to him. He took up music to while away the 
time, and became very proficient with the 
violin and the flute. The storehouse prison 
also droye him to books, and for the first time 
he got a relish for reading. Music and reading 
and studying the character of the different 
purchasers who came to the store were his only 
relief. He was peculiarly delighted with com- 
paring the characters of the people, and in 
ascertaining how they would severally act in 
given situations. With this view he would 
state a hypothetic case, and call for their 
opinions, one by one, as to the conduct which 
would be proper in it. If they differed he 
would demand their reasons, and enjoy highly 



Patrick Henry 55 

the debates in which he would thus involve 
them. Sometimes he would entertain them 
with stories, gathered from his reading, or, as 
was more frequently the case, drawn from his 
own fancy, composed of circumstances calcu- 
lated to excite, by turns, pity, terror, resent- 
ment, indignation, contempt; pausing in the 
turns of his narrative to observe the effect. 

Young Patrick Henry, in all this, had noth- 
ing in view but the pleasure of the moment, 
but it was the school of oratory which was 
training him for a great career. 

His store only lasted a year, but it took two 
years to wind up the bad business. 

Patrick's misfortunes, however, did not 
break his heart, neither did they make him 
overprudent, for at the age of eighteen he 
married his neighbor's daughter, who was as 
poor as himself. With the aid of all his 
friends, he was soon settled down on a little 
farm, where he was to try to make his bread. 
At this time there seemed to be only one good 
thing about him. He was kind-hearted, good 
to his young wife, but without any redeeming 
feature in the outlook, so far as the support 
of his home or a career of honor was concerned. 

He managed to keep soul and body together 
for two years on the farm, when he again tried 
keeping a little store. But he soon found that 
he was no better adapted to it than he was at 
"first. He went back to his violin, his flute, his 



56 Youth of Famous Americans 

books, his curious inspection of human nature ; 
and not unfrequently locked his store up and 
went hunting or fishing. 

His reading, however, now took on a serious 
cast. He studied geography and history, and 
began to delight in the orations of the ancients. 

The new experiment at merchandise left him 
in a worse fix than ever. Every atom of his 
l)roperty was gone, his friends were unable to 
assist him any further; he had tried every 
means of support of which he could suppose 
himself capable, and every one had failed; ruin 
was behind him; poverty, debt, want, and 
famine before ; and, as if his cup of misery 
was not already full enough, here was the wife 
whom he tenderly loved to suffer with him. 

In spite of his desperate situation, Patrick 
Henry maintained his cheerfulness. He came 
bobbing up as smiling as ever on the bosom of 
his sorrows and misfortunes. Having tried 
everything else and failed, he determined now 
to make a trial of the law. No one expected 
him to succeed. 

Patrick Plenry himself did not hope for any- 
thing above a scanty subsistence for himself 
and his young wife in the law. After he had 
studied six weeks he managed to pass an exam- 
ination and get a license to practice law. Ho 
had to have a certificate of three examiners ; 
one of these was Mr. John Randolph, a really 
great lawyer. When Patrick came to him this 



Patrick Henry 57 

elegant gentleman was so much shocked at the 
young fellow's ungainly figure and address that 
he refused to examine him; understanding, 
liowever, that he had already obtained two sig- 
natures, he entered with manifest reluctance 
on the business. A very short time was suffi- 
cient to satisfy him that he was dealing with 
a very unusual man. So interested did he be- 
come that he continued the examination for 
several hours. He led young Henry out into 
long discussions, and at the close of the exam- 
ination said to him, "Mr. Henry, if your 
industry be only half equal to your genius I 
augur that you will do well, and become an 
ornament and an honor to your profession." 

Patrick w^as twenty-four years old when he 
received his license to practice law, but it was 
not a great while before he had a chance to 
astonish the world, and possibly to astonish 
himself as much as the world. The famous 
case of the clergy versus the people gave him 
his opportunity. Space does not permit us 
to enter into the discussion of the merits of 
this case. But Patrick Henry was employed 
(Ml the side of the people. A great many lead- 
ing men, and especially the clergy, were present 
at the trial. Among these was Patrick's uncle, 
the Eev. Patrick Henry. When the young, 
lawyer saw him come into court he walked up 
to him and expressed his regret at seeing him 
there. "Why so?" inquired the uncle. "Be- 



58 Youth of Famous Americans 

cause, sir," was the reply, "You know that I 
have never yet spoken in public, and I fear 
that I shall be too much overawed by your 
presence to be able to do my duty to my 
clients; besides, sir, I shall be obliged to say 
some hard things of the clergy, and I am very 
unwilling to give pain to your feelings." His 
uncle reproved him for having engaged in the 
cause, which Patrick excused by saying that 
the clergy had not thought him worthy of be- 
ing retained on their side, and he knew of no 
moral principle by which he was bound to 
refuse a fee from their adversaries ; besides, he 
confessed, in this controversy both his heart 
and judgment, as well as his professional duty, 
were on the side of the people. He then re- 
quested that his uncle would do him the favor 
to leave the court. 

''Why, Patrick," said the old gentleman, 
with a good-natured smile. "As to your saying 
hard things of the clergy, I advise you to let 
them alone; take my word for it, you will do 
yourself more harm than you will them ; and 
as to my leaving the ground, I fear, my boy, 
that my presence could neither do you harm 
nor good in such a cause. However, since you 
seem to think otherwise, and desire it of me so 
earnestly, you shall be gratified." Whereupon 
he entered his carriage again and returned 
home. 

When Patrick Henry rose to speak curiosity 



Patrick Henry. 59 

was on tip-toe. He was very awkward at first, 
and faltered mueli in his opening remarks. 
Tlie people hung th<'ir heads; the clergy 
winked at each other; and Patrick's father, 
who was one of the magistrates, looked as if he 
would sink with confusion from his seat with 
very shame. 

But these feelings were of short duration, 
and soon gave place to others of a very 
different character. 

As the people listened they soon forgot Pat- 
rick's awkwardness. His figure straightened, 
and the spirit of his genius awakened all his 
features. His countenance began to beam 
with a nobleness and grandeur which it had 
never before exhibited. There was lightning 
in his eyes which seemed to pierce the specta- 
tor. His action became graceful, bold, and 
commanding; and in the tones of his voice, 
but more especially in his emphasis, there was 
a peculiar charm which surpassed anything 
they had ever heard. In the language of those 
who heard him on this occasion, "he made their 
blood run cold, and their hair to rise on ends." 

Patrick Henry was an hour in making his 
first speech, and that hour swept him into the 
first class of American orators, where he was 
to remain forever. 




DANIKL WKBb lER 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

Daniel Webster was the youngest of a fam- 
ily of ten children. It was a case in which 
the Scripture declaration that "the last shall 
be first" was realized, for he was destined to 
give fame to the family name throughout all 
time. He was born in a farmhouse, and 
brought up on a rocky farm in Salisbury, 
X. H. He was a delicate child, with eyes of 
immense size, and which seemed to be instinct 
with thought, feeling, and expression. The 
most remarkable feature about him in early 
years was that so frail a body could carry 
about so large a head. 

Daniel was a mother's boy. Pier mind mold- 
ed the sensitive mind and heart of her child, 
and gave character to the future mental and 
moral qualities of the man. His mother was 
his first and his best teacher. He learned to 
read with the Bible for his text-book. So early 
liad he been taught his letters that in after 
years he often said he could not remember the 
time when he could not spell. While yet a 
small boy he on one occasion set the bedclothes 
on fire while reading late at night. When he 
was reproved for his carelessness he replied 
that he was in search of light, but was sorry 



64 Youth of Famous Americans 

to say that he had received more of it than he 
desired. 

The first school which Daniel attended was 
two miles and a half away from the farmhouse, 
and even in the most severe winter weather 
he had to walk the five miles a day going and 
coming from school. His memory was some- 
thing prodigious. At the age of fourteen he 
could repeat from memory the whole of Pope's 
"Essay on Man," and nearly all of the hymns 
and psalms of Isaac Watts. 

Between the short sessions of school the fu- 
ture statesman was kept hard at work on the 
farm. He no doubt thought it very hard at 
the time, but in many of his great speeches in 
later years he expressed his pride in the fact 
that he had been brought up a farmer's boy, 
and had tilled the soil with his own hands. 

When Daniel was fourteen he became office 
boy to a young lawyer who had settled in the 
neighborhood, receiving as reward for his 
labors a chance to read the lawyer's books and 
some direction as to his studies. The youth 
devoted six hours every morning to the study 
of law, and devoted the afternoon to Shakes- 
peare and literature of that sort. 

A few months later his father arranged for 
him to go to the Phillips Academy, at Exeter, 
N. H. He did not do this with any idea of 
making a lawyer of the boy, but thought to 
fit him to be a school-teacher. On the 24th 



Daniel Webster 65 

of Mny, 17l)(>, wlu'ii Webster was in his fif- 
tceiitli year, lie set out on horseback for the 
aeadeniy. We can imagine that the boy was 
very much mortitied, as he had to make the 
journey on a sidesaddle intended for a lady, 
and his appearance was by no means attract- 
ive. Arriving at Exeter, he presented himself 
to Dr. Benjamin Abbott, the president of the 
academy, who was not only an able man but a 
man very pompous and self-sufficient in his 
manner. This majestic individual questioned 
the timid farmer boy very severely as to his 
previous studies. Finding that there was real 
knowledge in that big head, he picked up a 
Bible and, handing it to the boy, ordered him 
to read a passage. It was the twenty-second 
chapter of Luke. Webster was at home there, 
for he knew his Bible thoroughly, and his 
mother had taught him to read it and recite 
it with great impressiveness. The pompous 
old president was completely carried away by 
his splendid Bible reading, and when he had 
concluded exclaimed, "Young man,- you are 
qualified to enter this institution !" 

Daniel's work in the Phillips Academy was 
something truly remarkable. Dr. Abbott de- 
clared in after years that he never knew a 
boy whose power of amassing and retaining 
knowledge equaled that of young Webster. He 
covered an ordinary course of two years in 
nine months, and returned home to teach 



66 Youth of Famous Americans 

school in his sixteenth year. The family were 
very poor, and he wished to earn something 
to help his father as well as to further 
his own education. He was younger than 
many of his pupils, but was very successful, 
and might have remained a' country school- 
teacher all his life but for a happy circum- 
stance which opened for him a door into a 
larger world. 

Dr. Samuel Wood, a bright and scholarly 
clergyman, came to the neighboring town of 
Boscawen about this time, and took a fancy 
to young Webster. He drew the young man 
to him, and for several months gave him such 
instruction as opportunity afforded. To this 
bright young pastor is due the credit of the 
discovery of Daniel Webster. He saw that 
here was the clearest and strongest brain he 
had ever noted, and believed that there was 
a great future for the boy if he could only 
have a fair chance for an education. He went 
to Webster's father, and told him what he 
thought, and that it was certainly his duty to 
send Daniel to Dartmouth College — then, as 
now, the great college of the Granite State. 
The father was startled at such a thought. 
He could barely make enough for his family 
to live on, and at first glance it seemed impos- 
sible that money enough could be saved on the 
old farm to provide even the small amount 
which was then required to carry a boy 



Daniel Webster 67 

through college. But he took the subject home 
to his wife, and they brooded over it for days 
and weeks, until finally the decision was made 
that -Daniel should have a college education. 

One day when the father, now growing old, 
was riding in a rude sleigh with Daniel at his 
side, he broke the news to the boy, who had 
known nothing at all about the discussions 
which had been going on concerning him. The 
emotions of the boy were too great for utter- 
ance. One moment he was bathed in tears, 
and at the next he was shouting with exulta- 
tion and expressing his joy and gratitude to 
his father in the tenderest and most enthu- 
siastic terms. His sensitive heart fully appre- 
ciated the great sacrifice that was necessary 
at home in order that he might have this 
precious opportunity. 

Daniel at once began his preparations for 
the journey to Hanover, the seat of Dartmouth 
College. He arrived there while the faculty 
were engaged in examining candidates for ad-" 
mission to the freshman class. He had not 
even time to clean himself up before going 
into their presence. All covered with mud, 
drenched with rain, and presenting in every 
respect a most unfavorable aspect, he was 
ushered into the presence of the strange pro- 
fessors to stand the terrible test. His appear- 
ance was singular indeed. The rain had com- 
pletely saturated his suit of blue clothes, 



68 Youth of Famous Americans 

which had been woven, made, and dyed at 
home, and the fugitive colors had largely been 
transferred to his person. In later years, when 
he was a famous orator, his admirers used 
fondly to call him "Black Dan," but on that 
first day in college he might with still more 
appropriateness have been called "Blue Dan." 

Notwithstanding the mud and the shifting 
colors, the Dartmouth faculty found the quick, 
strong brain underneath, and Webster was ad- 
mitted to the college, of which he was to be 
the most famous graduate. 

Young Webster carried his diploma away 
from Dartmouth before he was twenty years 
old, and after a few months' teaching at Frye- 
burg, Me., he went to Boston and put himself 
under the instruction of Governor Gore, hav- 
ing now fully determined to make of himself 
a great lawyer. While here, two years later, 
there occurred to him an incident which illus- 
trates very clearly the stability of his character 
and the resolute will of the man. His father's 
estate was at that time very much embarrassed 
with debt. These debts had been chiefly in- 
curred by the efforts of the noble old man to 
support. his sons, Daniel and Ezekiel, during 
their collegiate studies. A pecuniary obliga- 
tion in that day, when men were often put into 
prison for debt, was a serious thing. One day 
Daniel received a letter from his father that 
he had succeeded in obtaining for his son the 



Daniel Webster 69 

ai»])ointiiR'iit of clerk to the Court of C^ouiiuon 
Pleas ill his native county, an olKce which was 
worth fifteen hundred dollars, a large portion 
of which could go to pay the father's debt. 
He asked Daniel to come home at once and 
enter upon the duties of his new office. 

To the young lawyer this was like a flash of 
lightning out of a clear sky. To give up his 
chosen profession and his hopes for a great 
career was a terrible calamity; yet he loved 
his father devotedly, and he felt willing to 
make almost any sacrifice to save him from 
burdens in his old age. A terrible struggle 
ensued in the mind of young Webster. He 
carefully studied both sides of the question. 
At length he started homeward, reached his 
father's house, and hurried into his presence. 
It was not long before the father discovered 
that Daniel was not happy over the new office, 
and at length he gently but positively refused 
to abandon his profession and subside into the 
obscurity of the court clerk. The old man was 
astonished and greatly offended. He used 
every argument to overcome the resolution of 
his ambitious son ; but he reasoned in vain. 
At last Daniel, having expressed his determi- 
nation to return to Boston, poured into the lap 
of his astonished father the sum in gold which 
was necessary to pay all his debts and set his 
mind at rest. The joy produced by this unex- 
pected good fortune may readily be imagined; 



70 Youth of Famous Americans 

and Daniel then explained how a generous 
friend in Boston, to whom he had stated his 
dilemma, had kindly offered to lend him the 
money, which offer he had thankfully accepted. 
This man, named Emery, gave to Daniel Web- 
ster the helping hand that at last thrust the 
door wide open for his entrance upon an 
illustrious career. 




HENRY CLAY 



HENRY CLAY 

The father of Henry Clay was a Baptist 
preacher, the Rev. John Clay, a native of Vir- 
ginia, who died when his son Henry was only 
five years old. Henry Clay was born April 12, 
1777, in Hanover County, Va., while the Revo- 
lutionary War was in full flame. In the back 
country district where Henry Clay was born 
the region abounded in swamps, which were 
popularly known as ''The Slashes." Many 
years afterward, when Clay was a candidate 
for the Presidency of the United States, his 
party friends called him "The Mill Boy of the 
Slashes." 

The Revolutionary War left its mark on all 
the region in that part of Virginia. After 
Henry Clay had become a great orator, he once 
recalled in a speech an incident of his child- 
hood which had been burned into his memory, 
how his mother's house was visited by the 
troops of the British general, Tarleton, and of 
their running their swords into the new-made 
graves of his father and grandfather, thinking 
they contained hidden treasures. 

The mother was poorly provided with means 
for the education of her numerous young fam- 
ily, for Henry was the seventh of a family of 



74 Youth of Famous Americans 

eight children, and the only early instruction 
the future statesman received was in the rude 
log-cabin schoolhouse where but the simplest 
rudiments were taught. His teacher, Peter 
Deacon, an Englishman, had been sent to this 
country for his country's g-ood, and was not 
able to carry his students very far along the 
highway of knowledge. 

As soon as Henry Clay was old enough to 
help — and that was at a very early period in 
those days — he began to be one of the workers 
of the household in the effort to secure their 
bread. He plowed the cornfield barefooted, 
and with no other clothes than a pair of thin 
cotton trousers and a coarse shirt. It was his 
special duty to go to mill with the bag of 
grain, and take his turn in the old-fashioned 
way in waiting for it to be ground into meal. 
On such occasions he rode a pony without a 
saddle, while a rope supplied the place of a 
bridle. He did this so continuously that the 
people who lived along the road to the mill 
became quite accustomed to it, and it was 
from this that there grew up the name for 
him, "The Mill Boy of the Slashes." 

When Henry Clay was fourteen years of 
age he was placed in a small retail store kept 
by Mr. Richard Denny, near the market house 
in the city of Richmond, Va. He remained 
there till the next year, when he got a better 
position in the office of the clerk of the High 



Henry Clay 75 

Court of Chancery, Mr. Peter Tiiisley. There 
he becanu! aequaiiited with the venerable Chan- 
cellor Wythe, attracted his friendly attention, 
and enjoyed the benefit of his instruction and 
conversation. The chancellor, being unable to 
write well in consequence of rheumatism in his 
right thumb, employed young Clay to do his 
writing for him. This was a most fortunate 
circumstance for the fatherless boy. This new 
position brought Henry Clay at a critical 
period of his youth directly into contact with 
the superior resources of one of the most culti- 
vated and refined minds in Virginia. The 
chancellor was a good linguist, eminently 
skilled in composition, and of a friendly turn 
to impart his knowledge to his assistant ; so 
that the copyist became in a measure his 
privileged pupil. The legal reports and com- 
ments which he took down from the chancel- 
lor's dictation must also have imparted some 
familiarity with the law. From Mr. Tinsley's 
office young Clay went to reside with Mr. 
Robert Brooke, at that time attorney-general 
of the State, with whom he advanced suffi- 
ciently far in the study of the law to secure a 
license in the Court of Appeals to practice 
the profession. 

On two occasions during the time of his law 
studies Henry Clay had the good fortune to 
hear Patrick Henry — once before the Circuit 
Court of the United States for the Virginia 



76 Youth of Famous Americans 

District, ou the (luestion of the payment of 
Ih'itish debts, and again before the House of 
Delegates of Virginia on the chiini of the 
supernumerary officers in the services of the 
State during the Revolutionary War. The 
great orator produced a lasting impression on 
the mind of Clay. Years afterward he said 
that the charm of Patrick Henry's eloquence 
consisted largely in one of the finest voices he 
ever heard, in his graceful gesticulation, and 
the variety and force of expression which he 
exhibited in his face. 

As soon as he had received his license to 
practice law, which was the only property he 
possessed in the world, he immediately set out 
to seek his fortune in Kentucky. Alighting 
at Lexington, then a small village, but the 
most important place in the region, he opened 
an office and began his career as an advocate. 
His quickness of parts and ready adaptability 
gave him immediate success. Nature had be- 
stowed upon him a fine voice and those mental 
and physical harmonies indispensable to the 
orator. His genius led him to cultivate a habit 
of speaking which with experience and devel- 
opment ripened into the highest eloquence. 
His method early in life was daily to read in 
some historical or scientific book, and deliver 
the information which he thus acquired in a 
set speech, alone by himself in the woods or 
fields or in some lonely barn "with the horse 



Henry Clay 77 

and ox for his only auclitors." He was candid 
enough to declare this in after life to a class 
of law students, a positive assertion of what 
may always be suspected, that eminent suc- 
cess, even with men of genius, is never with- 
out some such patient skill and labor in the 
acquisition of its powers. Even the rich na- 
ture of Henry Clay, which lived and breathed 
in eloquence, required some training of its 
wonderful faculties. The anecdote is told of 
his carrying his private practice into a de- 
bating society, and commencing, "Gentlemen 
of the jury," with some embarrassment, when 
he at once, on striking into the subject, car- 
ried his hearers along on a tide of eloquence 
and argument. 

There is a very amusing incident con- 
nected with one of the first successes through 
which the young lawyer won his spurs in his 
new field. He had succeeded in clearing two 
Oermans, a father and son, who had been 
charged with a serious crime. At the close of 
the trial an old, withered, exceedingly ill- 
favored German woman, who was the wife of 
the elder prisoner and the mother of the 
younger, on being informed of the discharge 
of her husband and son, ran toward the young 
advocate, in the excess of lier gratitude and 
joy, nnd tlirowing her arms about his neck 
kissed him with great manifestations of affec- 
tion. Although taken wholly by surprise, 



78 Youth of Famous Americans 

and hardly flattered by blandishments from 
such a source, young Clay acquitted himself 
upon the occasion with such grace and good 
humor that it won him new applause from the 
spectators. 

Not long after this the celebrated Aaron 
Burr was arrested in Kentucky on a charge 
of being engaged in an illegal warlike enter- 
prise. The sagacity and penetration of that 
extraordinary man were never more clearly 
evinced than in his application to young Clay 
to defend him. Henry Clay believed, and it 
was generally believed in Kentucky, that the 
prosecution was groundless and was being 
pushed simply as a matter of shrewd politics. 
Young Clay, generous and chivalrous in spirit, 
felt a lively sympathy for Colonel Burr on 
account of his being arrested in a State dis- 
tant from his own, also on account of his mis- 
fortunes and the great fall from the distin- 
guished stations he had filled. Still, with 
remarkable prudence, he declined to appear 
for Burr until he gave him written assurances 
that he was engaged in no enterprise forbid- 
den by law, and none that was not known and 
approved by the Cabinet at Washington. On 
receiving these assurances in writing Henry 
Clay appeared for him with great tact and 
ability. The generous spirit of Henry Clay 
never showed to better advantage than in the 
fact that because of his feeling that Colonel 



Henry Clay 79 

Burr ought not to bo dealt with as an ordinary 
culprit he declined receiving from him any 
fee, although a liberal one was tendered. 
When we remember the empty condition of 
the young lawyer's pocketbook we cannot but 
regard it as a high certificate of the generosity 
and nobility of his character. 

Burr was acquitted, and Henry Clay soon 
afterward found that Burr had deceived him. 
The next time they met was in a crowded 
court room with the eyes of many distin- 
guished men upon them. Colonel Burr hur- 
ried forward to shake hands with Mr. Clay. 
But Clay refused to shake hands with him. 
He would not thus honor the man who had 
been false to him. 




ANDREW JACKSON 



ANDREW JACKSON 

The parents of Andrew Jackson were poor 
Irish emigrants who landed in America in 
1767. They entered the New World at Charles- 
ton, S. C, and pressed on into the back- 
woods to share the labors and enjoy the fellow- 
ship of other Irish emigrants who had settled 
in that district. After two years' hard work 
the elder Andrew Jackson died, and a few 
days after his death Andrew Jackson the 
younger, who was to be one of the most pic- 
turesque figures in the history of the Ameri- 
can government, was born. The father having 
left little if any means of support for his 
family, the mother found a permanent home 
with a brother-in-law named Crawford. There, 
on a farm, the early boyhood of Andrew Jack- 
son was passed in hunting and fishing and 
chopping and plowing, and all of the ordinary 
pursuits of a boy on the frontier. His phys- 
ical powers were developed by healthy outdoor 
sports, his muscles disciplined by exercise, and 
his mind received such culture and education 
as the very limited privileges of the time per- 
mitted. He learned to read and write, and 
knew a very little of arithmetic. 

A little later his mother, by great self-sacri- 



84 Youth of Famous Americans 

iice, managed to send him for a few months to 
an academy at Charlotte, and thought for a 
while of preparing him for the Presbyterian 
ministry. Such would probably have been his 
career had not the war of the Revolution, now 
breaking out afresh in the South, carried him 
in quite a different direction. 

In 1779, when Andrew was twelve years old, 
came the invasion of South Carolina in the 
cruel and ruthless expedition of Prevost along 
the coast, followed by . the arrival of General 
Clinton and the fall of Charleston. General 
Tarleton carried devastation and woe into the 
very neighborhood where Andrew Jackson 
lived. This Irish settlement, known as the 
Waxhaws, put up a stout and desperate resist- 
ance to the advance of the invaders, and the 
battle which was fought there was a most 
bloody engagement. It was a massacre rather 
than a battle, as American blood was poured 
forth like water. The mangled bodies of the 
wounded were brought into the church of the 
settlement, where the mother of young Jack- 
son, then a boy of thirteen, with himself and 
brother, attended the sick and dying. That 
bloody battle, fought on the very spot where 
his father had worshiped, and near which he 
reposed, summoned the boy to his baptism of 
blood and struggle. Andrew Jackson was not 
the kind of boy to shrink from the encounter, 
and the next August we find him under Gen- 



Andrew Jackson 85 

eral Sumter at the attack on the enemy's post 
at llanj^ini;' Ivoek, aeeompanied to tlie light 
by J\Lajor JDavies's North (^arolina troops, 
though for some reason he does not appear to 
have engaged in the battle. A few days after 
General Gates was defeated at Camden, and 
Mrs. Jackson and her children fled before the 
storm of war to a refuge in the northern part 
of the district. The escape was but temporary, 
for, on her return in the spring, her boys were 
entangled, as they could not well fail to be in 
that region, in the desultory warfare which 
afflicted the Carolinas. In the preparation for 
one of the frequent skirmishes between Whig 
and Tory the two brothers were surprised, 
escaped in flight, and were betrayed and cap- 
tured. On this occasion occurred the often 
narrated scene of the indignity offered by the 
British oflicer which was met by the spirited re- 
sistance of the youth. Andrew was ordered by 
the officer, in no gentle tone, to clean his boots. 
He refused peremptorily, pleading his rights 
as a prisoner of war, an argument which 
brought down a rejoinder in a sword-thrust on 
the head and the arm raised for protection, the 
marks of which the old hero bore to his last 
day. A similar wound, at the same time, for 
a like offense, was the cause of his brother's 
death. Their imprisonment at Camden was 
most cruel. They were severely wounded, with- 
out medicine or care, with but little food, and 



86 Youth of Famous Americans 

exposed to contagion. But their mother fol- 
lowed them and managed to bring about their 
exchange. Few scenes of war can be fancied 
more truly heroic and pitiful than the picture 
presented by Mr. Parton, in his faithful biog- 
raphy of this earnest, afflicted, patriotic 
mother receiving her boys from the dungeon, 
"astonished and horrified" at their worn, 
wasted appearance. The elder was so ill as 
not to be able to sit on horseback without help, 
and there was no place for them in those 
troubled times but their distant home. It was 
forty miles away. Two horses, with difficulty 
we may suppose, were procured. "One she 
rode herself. Hobert was placed on the other, 
and held in his seat by the returning prisoners, 
to whom his devoted mother had just given 
liberty. Behind the sad procession, poor An- 
drew dragged his weak and weary limbs, bare- 
headed, barefooted, without a jacket." Before 
the long journey was thus painfully accom- 
plished "a chilly, drenching, merciless rain" 
set in, to add to its hardships. Two days after 
Robert died, and Andrew was, happily, per- 
haps, insensible to the event in the delirium 
of the smallpox, which he had contracted in 
prison. What will not woman undertake of 
heroic charity? This mother of Andrew Jack- 
son had no sooner seen her surviving boy re- 
covered by her care than she set off with two 
other matrons, on foot, traversing the long 



Andrew Jackson 87 

distance to Charleston to carry aid and con- 
solation to her nephews and friends immured 
in the deadly prison-ships in the harbor. She 
accomplished her errand, but died almost in 
its execution, falling ill of the ship fever at 
the house of a relative in the vicinity of the 
city. Thus sank into her martyr's grave this 
woman, worthy to be the mother of a hero, 
leaving her son Andrew, before reaching his 
fifteenth birthday, an orphan — a sick and sor- 
rowful orphan, a homeless and dependent 
orphan, an orphan of the Revolution. 

The youth remained with one of the Craw- 
fords till a quarrel with an American commis- 
sary in the house — this lad of spirit would 
take indignity neither from friend nor foe — 
drove him to another relative, whose son, 
being in the saddler's trade, led him to some 
six months' engagement in this mechanical 
pursuit. This was followed by a somewhat 
eager enlistment in the wild youthful sports 
or dissipations of the day, such as cockfight- 
ing, racing, and gambling, which might have 
wrecked a less resolute victim; but his 
strength to get out of this dangerous current 
was happily superior to the force which im- 
pelled him into it, and he escaped. He even 
took to study, and became a schoolmaster, 
not overcompetent in some respects, but fully 
capable of imparting what he himself had 
learned in the rude schools of the time. 



88 Youth of Famous Americans 

Andrew spent over a year in this way, saved 
his money, and then determined to prepare 
himself for the law. The youth — he was yet 
hardly eighteen — now offered himself as a stu- 
dent to the most eminent counsel in that 
region. He entered the law^ office of Mr. 
Spence McCay, a man of note at Salisbury, 
N. C. There during the following year he 
had also the legal instructions of an old war- 
rior of the Revolution, brave Colonel Stokes, 
a good lawyer and a curious mixture of the 
soldier and the citizen, wdio must have been 
quite to Andrew Jackson's taste. At the end 
of the year he was duly licensed, and began to 
practice law. 

Andrew Jackson's best biographer, Mr. Par- 
ton, paints this picture of him at this time : 
"A tall fellow, six feet and an inch in his 
stockings ; slender, but graceful ; far from 
handsome, with a long, thin, fair face, a high 
and narrow forehead, abundant reddish-sandy 
hair, falling low over it — hair not yet elevated 
to the bristling aspect of later days — eyes of 
a deep blue, brilliant when aroused, a bold 
rider, a capital shot." 

After getting his "law" the young advocate 
took a turn in the miscellaneous pursuits of 
the West, as a storekeeper at Martinsville, 
keeping up his connection with his profession 
by performing the executive duties of a con- 
stable. When he had reached the age of 



Andrew Jackson 89 

twenty-one lie may be said to have fairly en- 
tered upon his career, as he received the ap- 
pointment as prosecuting attorney in the 
Western District of North Carolina, a district 
which covered the present State of Tennessee. 
This carried him to Nashville, then a perilous 
journey through an unsettled country, filled 
with enemies both among the red men and the 
white. Jackson needed all his pioneer and 
soldier training for the life that was before 
him. To conduct the office of public prose- 
cutor in such a territory it was as important 
to be a good woodsman as a well-informed 
jurist. Indeed, there was more fear of the 
Indian than there was of the attorney for the 
defense. Jackson grew constantly as a law- 
yer, was honest and straightforward, and laid 
the foundation for the future honors that were 
in store for him. 




POCAHONTAS 



POCAHONTAS 

When the English settlements were made 
at Jamestown, Va., in 1607, the country now 
known as the State of Virginia was occupied 
by some twenty thousand Indians, eight thou- 
sand of whom were the subjects of Powhatan, 
a savage whose warlike renown had spread 
far through the forests and over the moun- 
tains, and who was a born leader of men. By 
diplomacy and force of character he had united 
forty tribes under his own authority. He 
regarded with great suspicion and distrust the 
coming of the English and on the first good 
opportunity undertook to destroy the leading 
spirit of the English settlement. 

Captain John Smith, an adventurous soldier, 
was the life and brains of the Jamestown 
settlement. He had managed to get on trad- 
ing terms with the Indians, and to secure from 
them the corn, beans, and pumpkins necessary 
to the life of the little settlement. But on one 
of these trading excursions, having become 
careless, and being attended by a very small 
party, he was attacked by three hundred sav- 
ages, led by the brother of Powhatan. The 
party was overcome, and Captain Smith him- 
self was captured after being badly wounded. 



94 Youth of Famous Americans 

He saved himself from instant death by his 
pocket compass. He called the chief's atten- 
tion to the restless play of the needle, at the 
same time attempting an explanation of the 
wonderful purpose it was made to serve. It 
is not likely that the Indians got much infor- 
mation, but the interesting little dial, which 
was very mysterious to them, saved his life 
for the time, and caused him to be taken 
before the great chief, Powhatan. 

He was at last introduced into a wigwam 
of unusual size, in the center of which was a 
blazing fire. At one end, upon a rude throne, 
sat Powhatan, a man of noble stature, and of 
majestic though severe demeanor. He was 
clothed in raccoon skins. On one side of him 
was his daughter, Matachanna; on the other, 
his younger and favorite daughter, Matoaka, 
the "Snow Feather," destined in the coming 
hour to render herself immortal under the 
beautiful but assumed name of Pocahontas. 
Against each wall of the wigwam sat a row 
of women, their faces and shoulders painted 
red, their hair adorned with the white down of 
birds, and their necks ornamented with beads. 

The queen of Apamatuck brought the guest 
water with which to wash his hands, and an- 
other lady of rank presented a bunch of feath- 
ers to dry them on. A consultation was then 
held, at the end of which two large stones were 
laid before Powhatan. Captain Smith was 



Pocahontas 95 

dragged to the altar thus improvised, and his 
head i)hic'cd upon the stones. Some half-dozen 
savages raised their clubs in the air, waiting 
for Powhatan's signal to beat out the brains of 
the helpless victim. Matoaka for a moment 
stayed her father's purpose by her tears and 
entre'aties ; but finding all intercession unavail- 
ing, she sprang forward, kneeled over Smith's 
prostrate form, clasped his head in her arms, 
and placing her own upon it, seemed deter- 
mined to share his fate. This heroic and gen- 
erous act touched the hearts of Powhatan and 
the executioners; the great chief yielded to 
the pleadings of his daughter, and set aside the 
sentence of death. 

"The account of this most touching and 
beautiful scene," says Mr. Hillard, "familiar 
as it is to everyone, can hardly be read with 
unmoistened eyes. The incident is so dramatic 
and startling that it seems to preserve the 
freshness of novelty amidst a thousand repeti- 
tions. We could almost as reasonably have 
expected an angel to have come down from 
heaven and rescued the captain as that his 
deliverer should have sprung from the bosom 
of Powhatan's family. The universal sym- 
pathies of mankind, and the best feelings of 
the human heart, have redeemed this scene 
from the obscurity which, in the progress of 
time, gathers over all but the most important 
events. It has pointed a thousand morals and 



96 Youth of Famous Americans 

adorned a thousand tales. Innumerable 
bosoms have throbbed, and are yet to throb, 
with generous admiration for this daughter 
of a people whom we have been too ready to 
underrate. Had we known nothing of her 
but what is related in this incident she would 
deserve the eternal gratitude of the inhabit- 
ants of this country, for the fate of the colony 
may be said to have hung upon the arms of 
Smith's executioners. He was its life and 
soul, and without the magic influence of his 
personal qualities it would have abandoned in 
despair the project of permanently settling 
the country, and sailed to England by the first 
opportunity." 

Matoaka was at this period twelve years old. 
Of her life up to this time nothing whatever 
is known, and we have no record of the influ- 
ences which wrought together to form a char- 
acter which would have been beautiful any- 
w^here, and was a marvel in one reared in a 
Virginia forest, amid lawless savages. On the 
settlement of the English colonists in their 
vicinity Powhatan changed her name to that 
of Pocahontas — signifying "A run between 
two hills." He appears to have believed that 
by thus concealing her true name he should 
deprive the English of the power of harming 
her. 

Some time later Pocahontas again appeared 
as the guardian angel of the settlers. Pow- 



Pocahontas 97 

liataii had resolved to fall upon the English, 
and had made siieli formidable preparations 
as would have secured him an easy triumph 
had not his intentions been divulged by his 
daughter. An old record written at the time 
in Jamestown says : 

'*For Pocahontas, his dearest jewel, in that 
dark night, came through the irksome woods 
and told our Captain great cheer should be 
sent us by and by; but Powhatan and all the 
power he could make would after come kill us 
all, if they that brought it could not kill us 
witli our own weapons when we were at sup- 
per, therefore, if w^e would live, she wished us 
presently to be gone. Such things as she 
delighted in the Captain would have given 
her; but, with the tears running down her 
cheeks, she said she durst not be seen to have 
any ; for if Powhatan should know it, she were 
but dead, and so she ran away by herself as 
she came.'" Thus Pocahontas again saved 
the lives of Captain Smith and his friends. 

A few months later Captain John Smith 
went away to England, and the English settle- 
ment came into other hands. Trouble sprang 
up, and Pocahontas was seized and held as a 
hostage in Jamestown. While here a young 
Englishman named John Rolfe won her heart, 
and she in turn gained not only his respect 
and admiration, but his tender love. The 
governor. Sir Thomas Dale, gave his consent 



98 Youth of Famous Americans 

to the marriage, and even Chief Powhatan 
sent his brother and two sons to be present at 
the wedding in Jamestown. 

The historian Lossing gives a most interest- 
ing account of the marriage of Pocahontas. 
"It was," he says, "a day in charming April, 
in 1613, when Rolfe and Pocahontas stood at 
the marriage altar in the new and pretty 
chapel at Jamestown. The sun had marched 
halfway up toward the meridian, when a 
goodly company had assembled beneath the 
temple roof. The pleasant odor of the 'pews 
of cedar' commingled with the fragrance of 
the wild flowers which decked the festoons of 
evergreens and sprays that hung over the 'fair 
broad windows,' and the commandment tablet 
above the chancel. Over the pulpit of black 
walnut hung garlands of white flowers, with 
the waxen leaves and scarlet berries of the 
holly. The communion table was covered with 
fair white linen, and bore bread from the 
wlieat fields of Jamestown, and wine from its 
luscious grapes. The font, 'hewn hollow be- 
tween like a canoe,' sparkled with water, as 
on the morning when the gentle princess ut- 
tered her baptismal vows. 

"Of all that conipany assembled in the broad 
space between the chancel and the pews, the 
bride and groom were the central figures in 
fact and significance. Pocahontas was dressed 
in a simple tunic of white muslin, from the 



Pocahontas 99 

looms of Dacca. Her arms were bare even to 
the shoulders ; and hanging loosely toward her 
feet was a robe of rich stuff, presented by Sir 
Thomas Dale, and fancifully embroidered by 
herself and her maidens. A gaudy fillet en- 
circled her head and held the plumage of birds 
and a veil of gauze, while her limbs were 
adorned with the simple jewelry of the native 
workshops. Rolfe was attired in the gay cloth- 
ing of an English cavalier of that period, and 
upon his thigh he w^ore the short sword of a 
gentleman of distinction in society. He was 
the j)ersonification of manly beauty in form 
and carriage; she of womanly modesty and 
lovely simplicity; and as they came and stood 
before the man of God history dipped her pen 
in the indestructible fountain of truth, and 
recorded a prophecy of mighty empires in the 
New World." 

After describing the governor and many 
other distinguished guests who were present, 
among them the Duke of ^Northumberland, 
Mr. Lossing says: "An earnest spectator of 
the scene was the elder brother of Pocahontas, 
but not the destined successor to the throne 
of his father. There, too, was a younger 
brother of the bride, and many youths and 
maidens from tha forest shades; but one noble 
figure — the pride of the Powhatan confeder- 
acy — the father of the bride, was absent. He 
had consented to the marriage with a willing 

L.cfC. 



100 Youth of Famous Americans 

voice, but would not trust himself within the 
power of the English at Jamestown." 

The marriage of Pocahontas secured peace 
for a long- time to the English settlement, and 
the historian writes that "The Rose of Eng- 
land lay undisturbed upon the Hatchet of the 
Powhatans while the father of Pocahontas 
lived." 




JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 



JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 

The father of John James Audubon, the 
famous naturalist, had a most romantic 
career. When he was twelve years old his 
father gave him, to use his own words, "a 
shirt, a dress of warm clothing, his blessing, 
and a cane, and sent him out to seek his for- 
tune." The lad went to Nantes, and^ falling 
in with the captain of a vessel bound on a fish- 
ing voyage to the coast of America, he shipped 
on board as a boy before the mast. He stuck 
to the ship, and at the age of seventeen was 
rated as an able-bodied seaman. At twenty- 
one he commanded a vessel, and at twenty- 
five he was owner and captain of a shij). He 
added other vessels to this until he had a fleet 
of them. He settled in Santo Domingo and 
made a fortune. On one of his trips to 
America, while he was residing in the West 
Indies, he met and married in Louisiana a 
lady of Spanish extraction, whose beauty and 
wealth are said to have made her equally at- 
tractive. Three sons and one daughter were 
born to this couple, and the future naturalist 
was the youngest of the sons. Some years 
later the Audubon family returned to France 
and purchased an estate there. 



104 Youth of Famous Americans 

The naturalist was born on his father's 
plantation near New Orleans, La., May 4, 
1780, and his earliest recollections are asso- 
ciated with lying among the flowers, sheltered 
by the orange trees, and watching the move- 
ments of the mocking-bird, dear to him in 
after-life from many associations. He says 
that his earliest impressions of nature were 
exceedingly vivid; the beauties of natural 
scenery stirred a frenzy in his blood, and at 
the earliest age the bent of his future studies 
was indicated by many characteristic traits. 
He left Louisiana while but a child, and 
went to Santo Domingo, where he resided for 
a short period, previous to his departure 
for France, where his education was to be 
commenced. 

Lifluenced by the military spirit of his time, 
young Audubon dreamed in his school days of 
being a soldier, but happily for natural science 
his adventurous spirit, which he had inherited 
from his father, found another outlet. For- 
tunately, his instruction was under the prac- 
tical guidance of his mother, and large scope 
was allowed him for indulging in nest-hunting 
propensities. Supplied with a haversack of 
provisions, he made frequent excursions into 
the country, and usually returned loaded with 
objects of natural history, birds' nests, birds' 
eggs, specimens of moss, curious stones, and 
other objects attractive to his eye. 



John James Audubon 105 

When the old sailor father returned after a 
long- absence at sea he was astonished at the 
large collection his boy had made, paid him 
some compliments on his good taste, and asked 
what progress he had made in his other studies. 
No satisfactory reply being given, he retired 
without reproach, but evidently mortified at 
the idleness of the young naturalist. On the 
day following this examination father and 
son started for Rochefort, where the elder 
held some appointment. The journey occu- 
pied four days, and the pair did not exchange 
one unnecessary word during the journey. 
Reaching his official residence, the father ex- 
plained that he himself would superintend his 
son's education, gave the boy liberty for one 
day to survey the ships of war and the forti- 
fications, and warned him that on the morrow 
a severe course of study should be commenced. 
And commence it did. More than a year was 
spent in the close study of mathematics; 
though whenever opportunity offered this 
study was neglected for rambles after objects 
of natural history and the collection of more 
specimens. Already Audubon had begun to 
draw sketches of birds and work toward his 
career. 

His father was desirous that he should join 
the armies of Napoleon and win fame as a 
soldier, but the dreams of his early boyhood 
had subsided, and he longed for the forests 



106 Youth of Famous Americans 

and the chance to study nature. The romantic 
old sailor on one of his many trips to America 
had bought a large tract of land at Mill Grove, 
near Schuylkill Falls, in Pennsylvania; and 
as he could not make a soldier of his boy he 
now sent him out to America to look after 
this property. He has recorded in affecting 
language his regret at leaving behind him the 
country where he spent his boyhood, the 
friends upon whose affections he relied, and 
the associations that had become dear to him. 
While the breeze wafted along the great ship 
many hours were spent in deep sorrow and 
melancholy musings. 

On arriving at Mill Grove he found that his 
nearest neighbor was an English gentleman 
named Bakewell. But the young fellow was 
so thoroughly French in his training, and the 
feeling between France and England in that 
day was so bitter, that he hated the very sight 
of an Englishman, and would have nothing to 
do with him. But the wife of the superintend- 
ent of his father's farm was a born match- 
maker, and there, was a pretty girl at the 
Bakewell home who she thought would just 
suit young Audubon, and so she kept at him 
until he returned his neighbor's friendly call. 
It finally came about, however, through his 
meeting Mr. Bakewell on a hunting excursion. 
Audubon tells the story in a very interesting 
way: 



John James Audubon 107 

"i was struck with the kind politeness of his 
manners, and found him a most expert marks- 
man, and entered into conversation. I ad- 
mired the beauty of his well-trained dogs, and 
finally promised to call upon him and his 
family. Well do I recollect the morning, and 
may it please God may I never forget it, when 
for the first time I entered the Bakewell 
household. It happened that Mr. Bakewell 
was from home. I was shown into a parlor, 
where only one young lady was snugly seated 
at work, with her back turned toward the fire. 
She rose on my entrance, offered me a seat, 
and assured me of the gratification her father 
would feel on his return, which, she added 
with a smile, would be in a few minutes, as 
she -would send a servant after him. Other 
ruddy cheeks made their appearance, but like 
spirits gay vanished from my sight. Talking 
and working, the young lady, wdio remained, 
made the time pass pleasantly enough, and to 
me especially so. It was she, my dear Lucy 
Bakewell, who afterward became my wife and 
the mother of my children," 

Audubon in his journal gives us some very 
interesting and amusing pictures of his life 
during these young days. One day he writes: 
"I had no vices, but was thoughtless, pensive, 
loving, fond of shooting, fishing, and riding, 
and had a passion for raising all sorts of fowls, 
which sources of interest and amusement fully 



108 Youth of Famous Americans 

occupied my tiiiic It was one of my fancies 
to be ridiculously fond of dress; to hunt in 
black satin breeches, wear pumps when shoot- 
ing, and dress in the finest ruffled shirts I 
could obtain from France." 

Regarding his mode of life, which he credits 
as the cause of his powers of endurance in 
later years, Audubon gives some hints which 
many young men w^ould do well to make 
note of. He says: 

"I ate no butcher's meat, lived chiefly on 
fruits, vegetables, and fish, and never drank a 
glass of spirits or wine until my wedding day. 
To this I attribute my continual good health, 
and endurance, and an iron constitution. So 
strong was the habit, that I disliked going to 
dinner parties, where people were expected to 
indulge in eating and drinking, and where 
often there was not a single dish to my taste. 
I cared nothing for sumptuous entertain- 
ments . . . All this time I was fair and rosy, 
strong as anyone of my age and sex could be, 
and as active and agile as a buck." 

Mr. William Bakewell, the brother of the 
young woman who so captured and held the 
fancy and afterward the loyal devotion of Au- 
dubon, has left on record a picturesque word 
picture of Audubon's house at Mill Grove dur- 
ing these days when he was just verging to- 
ward young manhood. For it is to be remem- 
bered that he was only seventeen years old 



John James Audubon 109 

when sent out to America by his fatlicr. 
Young' Bakewell writes : 

"Audubon took me to his house, where he 
and his companion Rosier resided, with Mrs. 
Thomas for an attendant. On entering his 
room I was astonished and delighted to find 
that it was turned into a museum. The walls 
were festooned with all sorts of birds' eggs, 
carefully blown out and strung on a thread. 
The chimney-piece was covered with stuffed 
squirrels, raccoons, and opossums; and the 
shelves around were likewise crowded with 
specimens, among which were fishes, frogs, 
snakes, lizards, and other reptiles. Besides 
these stuffed varieties, many paintings were 
arrayed upon the walls, chiefly of birds. He 
had great skill in stuffing and preserving ani- 
mals of all sorts. He had also a trick of train- 
ing dogs with great perfection, of which art 
his famous dog Zephyr was a wonderful ex- 
ample. He was an admirable marksman, an 
expert swimmer, a clever rider, possessed great 
activity, prodigious strength, and was notable 
for the elegance of his figure and the beauty of 
his features, and he aided nature by a careful 
attendance to his dress. Besides other accom- 
plisliments, lie was musical, a good fencer, and 
could plait willow baskets." 

Mr. Bakewell adds that Audubon once swam 
juToss the Schuylkill -River with him on his 
back — no contemptible feat for a young athlete. 




\VA^HI^■(. roX 1R\1N(. 



WASHINGTON IRVING 

The ancestry of Washington Irving belongs 
to an ancient line in Scotland, which has been 
traced to the first years of the fourteenth cen- 
tury. It is known as "the knightly family of 
Drum," from an old castle still occupied by the 
descendants on the banks of the river Dee. An 
early member of the family settled in the Ork- 
neys, where the race flourished and faded, and 
as Irving himself says, "dwindled, and 
dwindled, and dwindled, until the last of them, 
nearly a hundred years since, sought a new 
home in this New World of ours." 

William Irving arrived in New York in 
1760, bringing with him his wife, an English 
lady of Cornwall, whose maiden name was 
Saunders. These w^ere the parents of Wash- 
ington Irving, who was born in William 
Street, New York city, April 3, 1783. One 
of the earliest stories told about his childhood 
is concerning his Scotch nurse taking him out 
one day — it was the time of Washington's 
inauguration, and the First Congress in New 
York. The nurse and her charge fell in with 
the Father of his Country, when the shrewd 
girl, eagerly seizing the opportunity, presented 
the baby to liis notice. "Please, your excel- 
8 



114 Youth of Famous Americans 

lency, here's a bairn that's called after you!" 
Washington, whoso kind nature was not averse 
to such approaches, laid his hand upon the 
head of the child and blessed it. "That bless- 
ing," said Washington Irving, long after, "I 
have reason to believe has attended me 
through life." 

Young Irving was not at all precocious dur- 
ing his early school days. He was never a 
robust child, and all the stories of his boyhood 
life bear out the statement that his early 
schoolmasters did not predict for him a very 
brilliant career. Coming home one day, he 
told his mother, "The madam says I am a 
dunce; isn't it a pityf But he does not seem 
to have been at all heartbroken over her judg- 
ment. His ill health continued, and prevented 
him from entering Columbia College, which 
he would have entered if his health had per- 
mitted. He passed through life with little 
knowledge of Latin and practically no knowl- 
edge of Greek. His home education in Eng- 
lish literature was, however, much more thor- 
ough. He read Chaucer and Spenser, Addison 
and Goldsmith, and the other worthies who be- 
longed to the English classics of that day. 
There was nothing of the contemporary liter- 
ature of the time specially to arouse his in- 
tellectual appetite. It was before the days 
when Dickens was stirring up the boys in the 
English-speaking world. It is probable that 



Washington Irving 115 

Addison and the other writers whom I have 
mentioned, together with Dr. Johnson, had 
more to do than anyone else in fashioning and 
giving tone to Irving's style as a writer. His 
iirst production of which we have any knowl- 
edge was written at the age of nineteen, "The 
Letters of Jonathan Oldstyle," a series of 
papers on the follies and habits of New York 
which he contributed to the Morning Chroni- 
cle, a political daily newspaper which had been 
recently started by his elder brother, Dr. 
Peter Irving. These papers are lively and 
humorous productions; and though, of course, 
they do not equal the polish of the author's 
later style, yet they are certainly remarkable 
for their ease and finish. The young fellow 
had made the right start, and felt already the 
spur of his genius. 

Soon after this he made a journey to 
Europe, induced by symptoms of ill health. 
At this time, and for some years after, Irving 
was threatened with pulmonary difficulties. 
Indeed, the likeness painted by Jarvis, in his 
early manhood, bears painful evidence of this 
type of constitution. He lived to outgrow it 
entirely. There can be no more pleasing con- 
trast than a glance at the brilliant prime of 
Irving, as shown by the pencil of Newton and 
Leslie, by the side of the melancholy portrait 
by Jarvis. His European tour carried him 
to France, Italy, Switzerland, and England. 



116 Youth of Famous Americans 

An acquaintance with Washington All- 
ston, the charming and refined American 
artist at Rome, half persuaded him to 
turn his attention to painting, for which he 
had considerable taste and inclination. The 
pursuit, amid the beauties and glories of the 
arts in the Eternal City, was very fascinating 
to his imagination. "For two or three days," 
he said, "the idea took full possession of my 
mind; but I believe it owed its main force to 
the lovely evening ramble in which I first con- 
ceived it, and to the romantic friendship I had 
formed with xillston. Whenever it recurred 
to mind it was always connected with beauti- 
ful Italian scenery, palaces and statues, and 
fountains and terraced gardens, and Allston 
as the companion of my studio. I promised 
myself a world of enjoyment in his society, 
and in the society of several artists with whom 
he had made me acquainted, and pictured 
forth a scheme of life all tinted with the rain- 
bow hues of youthful promise. My lot in life, 
however, was differently cast. Doubts and 
fears gradually clouded over my prospects; 
the rainbow tints faded away; I began to 
apprehend a sterile reality, so I gave up the 
transient but delightful prospect of remaining 
in Rome with Allston, and turning painter." 
The law was the rather unattractive alterna- 
tive, and to the law for a while the young 
enthusiast returned. He read law with Judge 



Washington Irving 117 

Hoffman in New York after an absence 
abroad of two years, and huny out his attor- 
ney's sign after he was admitted to practice; 
but there is no record of any pursuit of his 
profession. The very year after his admission 
to the bar there appeared in New York the first 
number of Salmagundi; or. The Whim-Whams 
and Opinions of Launcelot Langstaff, Esq., 
and Others, a small publication of twenty 
pages, which was destined to make its mark 
upon the town and attract the notice of a 
wider circle. This sportive journal was the 
production of three clever-witted young fel- 
lows — Washington Irving, his elder brother, 
William, the verse-maker of the fraternity, 
and James K. Paulding, who also then first 
rose to notice in this little constellation. New 
York was not at that time too large to be under 
the control of a skillful, genial satirist. Com- 
pared with the huge metropolis of the present 
day, it was only a big family, where every- 
body of any consequence was known not only 
by name but by sight by everybody else. A 
postman could run all over town in an hour. 
One church bell could ring loud enough to 
call all its inhabitants to prayer if they were 
so inclined. There was only one amusement 
house in the city. The city, in fact, while 
large enough to afford material for and shelter 
a humorist with some degree of privacy, was, 
so far as society was concerned, a very mnn- 



118 Youth of Famous Americans 

ageable, convenient instrument to play upon. 
The genial young wits of Salmagundi touched 
the strings cunningly, and the whole town 
with agitated nerves contributed to the music. 
The humors of fashion, dress, the public balls, 
the militia displays, the elections, in turn 
yielded their sport; while graver, touches of 
pathos and sketches of character were inter- 
posed, of lasting interest. There are passages 
in Salmagundi of feeling, humor, and descrip- 
tion which the writers hardly surpassed in 
later years. It was the beginning, in America, 
of polite literature. 

Salmagundi closed at the end of the year, 
with its twentieth number, and was shortly 
succeeded by the famous History of New York 
from the Beginning of the World to the End 
of the Dutch Dynasty, hy-Diedrich Knicher- 
hocker. But now we are encroaching on man- 
hood, for, though Irving was still young, the 
philosophic Knickerbocker takes him out of 
youth and its experiments and adventures into 
the larger and more triumphant struggle of 
manhood. 




WENDELL PHILLIPS 



WENDELL PHILLIPS 

Wendell Phillips was born in a mansion 
on Beacon Hill, in Boston. Like Daniel Web- 
ster he was the youngest of a large family. 
When the cloud of war was hanging over the 
nation. November 29, 1811, young Wendell 
came to the happy fireside of John and Sally 
Phillips. 

The youth of young Phillips was surrounded 
by all the advantages which could be given by 
acknowledged social position, abundant wealth, 
and a home of truest culture. The Phillips 
home was one of wise discipline. One of the 
rules which John Phillips enforced in his 
house, and which he gave to all his children, 
was this : "Ask no man to do for you anything 
that you are not able and willing to do for 
yourself." Wendell Phillips in later life held 
himself to be greatly indebted to such wise 
lessons, which built up in him a manly self- 
reliance. 

Mrs. Phillips was a very devout Christian 
woman, and a great lover of the Bible, and the 
young boy received from her his early religious 
impressions. As a boy, she inculcated in him 
simplicity and earnest sincerity, and encour- 
aged that remarkable disposition to stand by 



122 Youth of Famous Americans 

the right which afterward developed itself 
with such force and made him the strong man 
that he was. 

When Wendell Phillips was fourteen years 
old there was a great revival of religion in 
Boston. He went one night to Park Street 
Church and heard Lyman Beecher preach. It 
was a heart-searching sermon which took hold 
of the boy's conscience, and made him feel as 
he never had felt before his responsibility to 
God. He went back to his Beacon Street 
home, went up to his room, and locking the 
door he threw himself down on his face on the 
floor, and there in humility before God he 
made the first great choice of his life, and 
promised that henceforth he would, if the 
divine strength was given him, do the right 
always, without fear. 

Wendell Phillips was always a large, fine- 
looking boy for his age. He was prepared for 
college in the Boston Latin School, and en- 
tered Llarvard at sixteen. Phillips and Mot- 
ley, the historian, were classmates and were 
warm personal friends. They both ranked 
high among their fellows on account of their 
manly beauty, elegant manners, fine scholar- 
ship, and acknowledged social position. 

There was nothing in the college life of 
Wendell Phillips to suggest the future re- 
former. He gave some attention to athletics, 
was a boxer and fencer, and acquired fair skill 



Wendell Phillips 123 

in both (U'partiiieiits of this manly art. He 
was never known to be in the opposition; and 
never got into any trouble on account of his 
dissent from the opinions of others. During 
his entire college course there was never any- 
thing in his career to suggest his being a radi- 
cal, either in politics or in social life. Indeed, 
on the contrary, after having been elected 
president of the "Hasty-Pudding Club," he 
was made i^resident of another exclusive so- 
ciety known as the "Gentleman's Club." He 
had so little interest in reform that he suc- 
ceeded in defeating the first proposition to 
establish a temperance society at Harvard — 
not much of a prophesy in that of the man 
who was afterward to run for governor of 
Massachusetts on the Prohibition ticket. 

In later years Wendell Phillips was often 
considered sarcastic and critical and harsh. 
But of his college life a classmate said, 
"Whenever we are abusing a fellow Phillips 
always finds something good to say of him." 
No people were so astonished as Wendell Phil- 
lips's classmates when he joined the anti- 
slavery movement. 

Phillips rarely read speeches while at Har- 
vard, and seemed to have no taste for oratory. 
He, however, enjoyed debate, and never failed 
to get into one if he had a chance. His favor- 
ite study was history. 

"But," said Wendell Phillips one day, in 



124 Youth of Famous Americans 

speaking of his college life, "if I had followed 
my own bent I should have given my time to 
mechanics or history; and my mother used to 
say that when I became a lawyer a good car- 
penter was spoiled." 

After his admission to the bar Phillips hired 
desk room in an office on Court Street, in Bos- 
ton, and displayed his sign. Weeks and months 
crept on; but for him it was the old story of 
"a good calling, but no clients." But luckily 
for him there was no starving time, and he 
was at liberty to seek recreation and enjoy- 
ment in the interesting things that were hap- 
pening in the world. One of his early friends 
says of this .time : 

"I remember a year or so after we left the 
university I met Mr. Phillips on the street; 
and I asked him if he were getting any clients. 
He said no, he was not. I told him the case 
was much the same with me, and added that 
I was much surprised to hear of his ill 
success. 

" ^Well,' said he, ^I will wait six months 
more; and then, if clients do not come, I will 
not wait for them longer, but will throw my- 
self heart and soul into some good cause, and 
devote my life to it if necessary.' " 

The good cause was coming on apace. There 
was then a man in Boston named William 
Lloyd Garrison. He was fighting for the slave, 
and against great odds. He was in advance of 



Wendell Phillips 125 

his time. No one was ready to stand by him. 
He went one day to Dr. Lyman Beeeher and 
urged him to take up the cause. Beeeher said : 

"I have too many irons in the fire already." 

"Then, you had better let all your irons 
burn than neglect your duty to the slave," was 
Garrison's answer. 

Garrison had started his paper, The Libera- 
tor, and was slowly but fearlessly making him- 
self felt, when one day there came an explo- 
sion. An antislavery meeting was being held 
under the auspices of some women. Such 
threats had been made that the city authori- 
ties had been petitioned to protect them. The 
mayor came to their meeting, and told them 
they were disturbers of the peace and he could 
do nothing for them. As the meeting was 
closing a well-dressed mob of rioters rushed 
into the hall. Garrison was present. He was 
dragged to the window, and the rioters were 
about to throw him out when a man with more 
conscience interfered. They drew him back 
and coiled a rope around his body, preparing 
him to be dragged through the streets of Bos- 
ton. He was dragged bareheaded, and with his 
garments torn, into State Street, in the rear 
of City Hall (now the "Old State House"). 

Seated by his study window in Court Street, 
Wendell Phillips, the young Boston lawyer, all 
of whose days had been surrounded by luxury 
and culture, glancing up from the pages of his 



126 Youth of Famous Americans 

book, and out into the thoroughfare, caught 
sight of an unusual crowd of people. Men 
were hurrying toward" the City Hall as fast 
as their feet could carry them; children were 
shouting at the top of their voices; and now 
and then a woman joined in the rush. What 
was the matter? 

Prompted by curiosity, young Phillips laid 
aside his book, got his hat, and hurried out 
into the street. With quick steps he pushed 
his way through the crowd toward the City 
Hall. There he saw a thousand men and more 
clothed in broadcloth like himself, men who 
by their dress and appearance were as respect- 
able as himself, dragging a man, dirty and 
bleeding, with clothing torn, and a rope 
around his waist. 

"Who is that man?" inquired Phillips. 

"William Lloyd Garrison," replied a man 
at his elbow. 

At once his heart was filled with indigna- 
tion at the brutality and lawlessness of the 
proceeding. All his love for personal liberty, 
which was a part of his inheritance, descend- 
ing with his blood from a long line of noble 
ancestors, cried out against the horrid sight. 

He noticed the mayor entreating the crowd 
to maintain order and peace, but took note of 
the fact that it was only pleading and not 
commands which he uttered. Phillips himself 
belonged to a military society, and held a com- 



Wendell Phillips 127 

mission in a Suffolk regiment. He looked 
about him, and there within reach of his hand 
stood the colonel of that regiment looking- on 
at the mob like himself. 

"Colonel," said Phillips, "why not call out 
the Guards? Let us offer our services to the 
mayor." 

"You fool !" replied the colonel, pointing to 
the crowd that surged and pressed before them, 
"don't you see that the regiment is in front 
of you'^" 

Phillips saw that this was true. There in 
front of him in that surging mob were mer- 
chants and doctors and lawyers, men from the 
colleges and those who were supposed to rep- 
resent the best sentiments of the State of 
Massachusetts. 

Wendell Phillips had come down from his 
office that day still a dilettant young man of 
culture, a lawyer without clients, a cultivated 
gentleman without a purpose. He went back 
to his office a new man. He was no longer 
without a purpose. That sight had done what 
years of ordinary living could not have accom- 
ydished. Phillips was born again, and from 
now on was the reformer. 




WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 

William Cullen Bryant was born to liter- 
ature. His father, Dr. Peter Bryant, was not 
only a man of high character and attainments, 
but was well versed in literature and science 
and devoted himself with singular fidelity to 
the development of the gifts of his son. His 
mother also was a woman of brilliant mind 
and beautiful character. 

Dr. Peter Bryant, the father, though never 
known to fame as such, was himself a poetic 
spirit, and it was from his veins the young 
poet drew the heavenly stream. Bryant says 
in his autobiography: / 

"My father delighted in poetry, and in his 
library were the works of most of the eminent 
English poets. He wrote verses himself, most- 
ly humorous and satirical. He was not un- 
skilled in Latin poetry, in which the odes of 
Horace were his favorites. He was fond of 
music, played on the violin, and I remember 
hearing him say that he once made a bass viol 
— for he was very ingenious in the use of tools 
— and played upon it. 

"He was of a mild and indulgent temper, 
somewhat silent, though not hesitating in con- 
versation, and never expatiated at much 



132 Youth of Famous Americans 

length on any subject. His patients generally 
paid him whatever they pleased, if ever so 
little, so that he could not by any means be 
called a thriving man. In one respect he did 
not stint himself: he always dressed well. . . . 
He had a certain metropolitan air." 

Few children have shown such taste for 
literature and such precocity concerning it as 
young Bryant. At the age of ten he was a 
contributor of verses to the neighboring 
Hampshire Gazette, his childhood home being 
in Hampshire County, Mass. Two ministers, 
the Rev. Mr. Snell, of Brookfield, and the Rev. 
Mr. Hallock, of Greenfield, Mass., served as 
his instructors, and under their care he was 
prepared for Williams College, which he en- 
tered as a sophomore in his sixteenth year, in 
1810. The year previous to this, when he was 
in his fifteenth year, there appeared a thin 
little pamphlet of poems from his pen, at Bos- 
ton, entitled The Embargo; or. Sketches of 
the Times. A Satire. The second edition, 
corrected and enlarged, together with the 
Spanish B evolution, and other poems. The 
preface to the leading poem bears date, Cum- 
mington, October 25, 1808, and the rest are 
dated still earlier. The iwems, therefore, were 
written before tlie author had completed liis 
fourteenth year, a remarkable instance of 
early ])oetieal cultivation, when we consider 
both the subject-matter of the poems and their 



William Cullen Bryant 133 

execution. "The Embargo: a Satire," was a 
political poem written from the point of view 
of a Federalist, and making a sharp attack 
on Thomas Jetferson, who was then President. 
It was, of course, saying in his own way what 
was in the air at the time, but that a mere boy 
should put all this feeling of the times into 
three or four hundred good set verses is some- 
thing very remarkable. The critics of a liter- 
ary monthly of Boston, entitled Monthly An- 
thology, refused to believe the statement of 
the extreme youth of the writer, and when the 
second edition came out a special certificate 
was appended vouching for the fact that his 
age had been given correctly. That incident 
is perha]3s without a parallel in literature. 

At college young Bryant was distinguished, 
as might have been anticipated, by his fond- 
ness for the classics. He did not, however, 
pursue his studies to the close of the course at 
Williamsburg, Mass., but left with an honor- 
able dismissal with the intention of comple- 
ting this portion of his education at Yale. 
From this he was diverted to the immediate 
study of the law. But, though he was ad- 
mitted to the bar, the law had no more fascina- 
tion for Bryant than it had for Washington 
Irving, and his legal studies w^ere but an 
interesting episode in his career. 

Of course, the most interesting feature of 
Bryant's youth was the fact that through all 



134 Youth of Famous Americans 

his boyhood and early manhood he was ever 
the poet. In 1816 there appeared in the NoHh 
American Review what is perhaps to this day 
the most popularly known of his productions, 
the lines entitled "Thanatopsis." They were 
written four years before, when the poet was 
but eighteen. Their lofty declamation, on the 
most solemn of all themes, still find an echo 
in the hearts of men and women, and cannot 
cease to do so, so long as life continues to be 
devoured by death. It is one of the most 
widely known poems in the English language. 
It is recited by schoolboys, and found in popu- 
lar collections as universally in England as in 
America. Perhaps no poem that was ever 
written, with the exception of the twenty-third 
psalm, has been more frequently quoted in the 
last half century, in the pulpit and in great 
orations of solemn import, than Bryant's 
"Thanatopsis." It may be doubted if any poet 
who ever wrote has given a sublimer setting 
to one of the great incentives to manly 
endeavor : 

"So live, that when thy summons conies to join 

The innumerable caravan which moves 

To that mysterious realm where each shall take 

His chamber in the silent halls of death, 

Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night. 

Scourged to his dungeon; hut, sustained and soothed 

By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave 

Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 

Al)out him. and lies down to pleasant di-eams." 



William Cullen Bryant 135 

We may well believe the story of the fond 
father, though, like many New Englanders of 
the time, "a somewhat stern and silent man," 
that he melted into tears at the recital of these 
verses. It is still more remarkable that this 
l)oem does not by any means stand alone at 
this early period, the dawn of the poet's career. 
The ''Inscription for an Entrance into a 
Wood" was written the year after, in 1813. It 
is in the same easy, sonorous, well-modulated 
blank verse, and stands as a prelude to many 
of the author's subsequent poems, which have 
drawn a genuine inspiration from that wood- 
land — a real American forest; with all its pecu- 
liarities of light and foliage, of rock and rivu- 
let, its rustling leaves, its busy animal life, 
and the minstrelsy of the winds. The wealth 
of his imagination, and the fidelity of it, as 
well as his poetic gift are beautifully illus- 
trated in this poem : 

"•stranger, if thou hast learned a truth which needs 

No school of long experience, that the world 

Is full of guilt and misery, and hast seen 

Enough of all its sorrows, crimes, and cares. 

To tire thee of it. enter this wild wood 

And view the haunts of Nature. The calm shade 

Shall bring a kindred calm, and the sweet breeze 

That makes the green leaves dance, shall waft a balm 

To thy sick heart. Thou wilt find nothing here 

of all that pained thee in the haunts of men 

And made thee loathe thy life. The primal curse 

Fell, it is true, upon the unsinning earth. 



136 Youth of Famous Americans 

But not in vengeance, (iod hath yoked to (iuilt 

Her pale tormentor, Misery. Hence, these shades 

Are still the abodes of gladness : the thick roof 

Of green and stirring branches is alive 

And musical with birds that sing and sport 

In wantonness of spirit : while below 

The squirrel, with raised paws and form erect. 

Chirps merrily. Throngs of insects in the shade 

Try their thin wings and dance in the warm beam 

That waked them into life. Even the green trees 

Partake the deep contentment ; as they bend 

To the soft winds, the sun from the blue sky 

Looks in and sheds a blessing on the scene. 

Scarce less the cleft-born wild flower seems to enjoy 

Existence than the winged plunderer 

That sucks its sweets. The massy rocks themselves. 

And the old and ponderous trunks of prostrate trees 

That lead from knoll to knoll a causey rude 

Or bridge the sunken brook, and their dark roots, 

With all their earth upon them, twisting high, 

Breathed fixed tranquillity. The rivulet 

Sends forth glad sounds, and tripping o'er its bed 

Of pebbly sands, or leaping down the rocks. 

Seems, with continuous laughter, to rejoice 

In its own being. Softly tread the marge. 

Lest from her midway perch thou scare the wren 

That dips her bill in water. The cool wind. 

That stirs the stream in play, shall come to thee, 

Like one that loves thee nor will let thee pass , 

I'ngreeted, and shall give its light embrace." 

That such a poem could have been written 
by a boy of nineteen seems ahnost impossible, 
and yet the truth of the date is beyond ques- 
tion. The "Lines to a Waterfowl," which is 
regarded by many as the most delicate and 
poetic of all his writinj^', followed but a little 



William CuUen Bryant 137 

later. The closing stanza of that poem has 
comforted many a voyager on life's uncertain 
journey : 

"He who, from zone to zone, 
(iuides through the boundless' sky thy certain tlight, 
In the long way that I must tread alone, 

Will lead my steps aright." 



GILBERT STUART 

Gilbert Stuart, the renowned American 
artist, was born in Rhode Island in a little 
house by the side of a brook which flowed into 
Petaquamscott Pond, in the Narragansett 
country. The old house, up to a few years 
ago, had never been altered other than that 
the wheel that once ground snuff for the many 
now grinds corn for its sparsely settled neigh- 
borhood. The father of Gilbert Stuart was 
a snuif grinder, but about the time Gilbert 
was coming to the days of remembrance 
the mother insisted that they should remove 
to Newport, where the son could have the 
benefit of proper schools. Up to this time 
Mrs. Stuart had been the lad's only teacher. 
From her he had acquired the rudiments of 
learning, and although unacquainted with 
Latin, and therefore unable to teach the lan- 
guage, she created such a desire in his mind 
to master it that he soon made himself fa- 
miliar with it when opportunity offered. 

In Newport a scholarly preacher, the Rev. 
George Bissit, took an interest in the lad, and 
under the instruction of this good man he 
made great progress, and soon became a Latin 
scholar. But it was hard work for hiin to 



140 Youth of Famous Americans 

study — his spirits were too buoyant for that ; 
he was too fond of praidvs — all sorts of mis- 
chief that boys are ijrone to, and which often 
makes them hard to manage; and, moreover, 
he had another love, which claimed more than 
a share of his attention. He could curb his 
inclination for mischief for the moment; was 
willing to give up a portion of his time to 
books, for he saw the need of it ; but his fond- 
ness for drawing' he could not suppress, nor 
did he attempt it. 

No portfolio of Stuart's early drawings has 
been preserved, for he had no portfolio. No 
record has been made of his early eiforts — no 
record could be made, for the first brush of a 
sleeve, the first passing shower, effaced what 
he had sketched with chalk or charcoal on a 
fence, a slab, or a tailboard. 

In these early drawings thi^re was no at- 
tempt at anything more than the merest out- 
line, and in work of this kind there could be 
little that was improving; but it was to him a 
delight, and at last he came to feel that he 
could be, must be, a painter. Then the happy 
day came when he had colors, a palette, and — 
when he could find them — sitters. The 
earliest product of his pencil, so far as is 
known, is a picture owned by Thomas R. Hun- 
ter, Esq., of Newport, R. I., a couple of 
Spanish dogs. The history of the picture is 
quite interesting: 



Gilbert Stuart 141 

Dr. William Hunter, who came to America 
ill 1752, had attained to a high position in his 
profession, and practiced medicine o>^er a wide 
circuit of country having Newport for its 
center. During a professional visit at the 
house of Gilbert Stuart he asked Mrs. Stuart 
who made all the drawings in chalk and char- 
coal on the sides of the barn. She replied by 
pointing to her son, with whom the doctor at 
once entered into conversation. Before leav- 
ing, the doctor made the lad promise, the boy's 
mother having given her consent, that he 
would come to see him on Election Day, and 
make him a visit. The boy was true to his 
engagement, and the doctor, interested in the 
young sketcher, gave him brushes and colors, 
and bade him paint a picture of the two dogs 
that were lying on the floor under a table. 
Stuart at once entered upon the work, and 
while engaged in painting the picture re- 
mained a guest in the house of Dr. Hunter. 

At the age of thirteen Stuart met with en- 
couragement in the form of an order for two 
portraits — likenesses of Mr. and Mrs. John 
Bannister, of Newport. The Bannisters were 
then prominent in Newport, and were large 
landowiK^rs. These portraits are now in the 
Redwood Library. They are not remarkable 
as pictures, but the facts connected with thein 
make them interesting, '^riiat they were like 
the sitters cannot be doubted ; for a very beau- 



142 Youth of Famous Americans 

tifully painted miniature of Bannister, of an 
earlier date, in a similar scarlet coat, and 
showing the same cast of features, may still be 
seen in Newport. 

At the age of sixteen Stuart painted a por- 
trait of his father, but what became of it is 
not known. It had a place in the collection 
of Stuart's pictures exhibited in Boston soon 
after the artist's death, but since then all 
record of it has been lost. 

In 1770 Stuart had the friendly advice for 
the first time of one qualified to help him in 
his art study. That year there came to 
America an artist by the name of Cosmo Alex- 
ander. But little is known of him other than 
his name. That he was a gentleman was clear 
— a man who was not only fond of art, but who 
had made some progress as a painter. He 
remained in the New World about two years, 
visiting during that time many places of inter- 
est, but spending the larger part of his stay 
in Newport. While there Stuart came under 
his notice, and seeing evidence of skill in the 
young man he gave him all the instruction he 
was capable of, in the way of his art. Young 
Stuart was quick to catch the slightest hint 
where his art was concerned, and made such 
rapid progress that Alexander, when he re- 
turned to England, took him with him, prom- 
ising to put him in the way to learn all that 
related to his profession. He would without 



Gilbert Stuart 143 

doubt have kept this ])r()niise if he had lived, 
but, unfortunately, he died soon after reaeh- 
iny Edinburgh. In his last moments he com- 
mended Stuart to the care of his friend. Sir 
George Chambers. But here a new misfor- 
tune befell Stuart, for Sir George quickly fol- 
lowed Alexander to the grave. Stuart was 
thus cast suddenly and unexpectedly upon his 
own resources, and these were slight indeed, 
for he had not attained to sufficient skill in 
his profession to win his way satisfactorily. 
Sir George Chambers, before his death, had 
found an opening for him in the University of 
Glasgow, where he was studying diligently to 
make good the defects in his education. But, 
lacking the necessary means for his support, 
he could not long remain there. With his 
brush he could earn enough to meet his own 
simple wants, but not enough to dress as did 
his fellow-students; and, keenly feeling the 
annoyances growing out of his position, he 
abandoned the pursuit, and thought only of 
returning to America. He made the voyage 
home in a collier, bound for Nova Scotia, and 
perhaps no lad ever suffered more in body 
and spirit. So painful was the impression 
made upon him while shut up in the vessel 
that he could never after be induced to speak 
of it. 

Stuart had been absent two years, and al- 
though his experience had been a hard one he 



144 Youth of Famous Americans 

had acquired a great deal of information. He 
had seen better pictures than he could see at 
home, and had been brought into contact with 
men of established reputations. Thirsting for 
knowledge, and quick to understand what he 
saw in the work of others, he felt that he was 
better prepared than he otherwise could have 
been to appear before his countrymen as a 
portrait painter. 

That his merits were recognized at this 
early period is evident, for he was soon called 
upon to paint the portraits of some of the 
wealthy Jews in Rhode Island ; one picture 
of a rabbi, whole length, supposed to be still 
extant somewhere in New York, has been 
spoken of in particular. Among the portraits 
painted at that time were those of the Lopez 
family. He had also many other orders. "His 
uncle, Mr. Anthony, of Philadelphia," says 
Dr. Waterhouse, "was proud of his ingenious 
nephew, and employed him to paint a portrait 
of himself, and his wife and children." This 
led to other commissions, and, for one so 
young, he had already been very successful, 
particularly when we take into consideration 
the times. 

But while so engaged Stuart did not forget 
or neglect to study drawing from the life ; and, 
the better to understand what he felt to be of 
the utmost importance, he and his friend 
AYatorhouse clubbed together and hired a 



Gilbert Stuart 145 

''stroiig-iiiusck'd blaeksiiiitli" as a model, pay- 
iiijA' him half a dollar an evening. 

All this was very pleasant, and very profit- 
able; but the disturbed state of the times be- 
gan to make it diiHcult to obtain sitters; war 
seemed inevitable, and the chances w^ere that 
if there was an open rupture between England 
and America there would be no possibility of 
his again visiting Europe for a long time. He 
had tasted of the waters that as yet were be- 
yond his reach, and nothing short of a fuller 
and more complete knowledge of art as prac- 
ticed abroad could satisfy him. Pie had an 
intense desire to study under West, his coun- 
tryman, and so, with but one letter of intro- 
duction in his pocket, he embarked on board 
the last ship that escaped detention in Boston 
Harbor, in the spring of 1775, and sailed for 
Great Britain. 
10 



ROBERT FULTON 

Robert Fulton was born in a farmhouse in 
1765. Down to his eighth year he was edu- 
cated at home. His mother taught him to 
read and write, but his penmanship was 
limited in possibilities. He also had a slight 
knowledge of arithmetic, and very early in 
life he showed an aptness for drawing. In 
1773 he was sent to school in Lancaster, Pa., 
where he was .taught by Caleb Johnson, a dig- 
nified Quaker, who soon pronounced young 
Fulton a dull pupil. He was backward with 
his lessons and frequently reproved, but it was 
soon ascertained that he was by no means idle. 
He cared less for books than for his pencil, 
and during the time allotted for recreation he 
often spent hours over drawings. 

Robert had a fondness for the shops of the 
mechanics, where he was heartily welcomed; 
with his taste for drawing, and his quick- 
ness in mechanical work, he often rendered 
practical aid to ]iorsons much older than 
himself. 

A few anecdotes of his school days are pre- 
served in the histories and traditions of Lan- 
caster. One day his teacher reproved him for 
neglecting his books, and the reproof was ad- 



148 Youth of Famous Americans 

ministered after the manner of "the old mas- 
ters" — with a ferule on the knuckle. Robert 
straightened himself, folded his arms, and 
then said to Mr. Johnson, ''Sir, I came here 
to have something beat into my head and not 
into my hand." 

On another occasion he came late, and when 
the teacher asked the reason Robert answered 
that he had been at Mr. Miller's shop pound- 
ing out lead to make a pencil. In proof of his 
statement he exhibited the pencil, and said 
it was the best he ever had in his life; the 
teacher approved it, and gave the youth some 
words of encouragement, and in a few days 
nearly all the other pupils were supplied with 
pencils of the same kind. It is said that when 
Mr. Johnson once urged him to give more 
attention to his studies the boy answered that 
his head was "so full of original notions that 
there was no room to store away the contents 
of dusty books." As he did not spend his time 
in idleness, there is no doubt of the sincerity 
of his statement, and his devotion to mechan- 
ical works shows what was the natural bent of 
his mind. 

In 1778, when Robert was thirteen years 
old, the following notice was published in 
Lancaster : 

"The excessive heat (»f tlie weather, the i)res- 
ent scarcity of candles, and other considera- 
tions, induce the council to recommend to the 



Robert Fulton 149 

inhabitants to furbt-ar illinninating the city 
on Saturday evening' next, July 4." 

Like other patriotic youths, Ilobert Fulton 
had prepared for the illumination, and had 
a quantity of candles re^ady. As soon as the 
notice appeared he went to the shop of Mr. 
Fisher and asked to exchange his candles for 
powder. Mr. Fisher asked why he wished to 
part with the candles, which were scarce and 
dear. The boy answered that he was a good 
citizen, and wanted to respect the request of 
the council, who did not wish the streets and 
windows illuminated. He would not use the 
candles for the purpose they were originally 
intended, but would illuminate the heavens 
with skyrockets. 

After obtaining the powder he bought some 
sheets of pasteboard at another shop, and asked 
that the sheets might be left open as he wished 
to roll them in his own way. On being ques- 
tioned by the shopkeeper he gave the same 
explanation he had given to Mr. Fisher. The 
pasteboard dealer laughed, and said it was an 
impossibility to shoot candles through the air 
in the way he proposed. 

"No, sir," Robert answered, "there is noth- 
ing impossible." 

He made the rockets, which were fairly suc- 
cessful, and succeeded in astonishing the good 
people of Lancaster, who had never seen any- 
thing of the kind. 



150 Youth of Famous Americans 

In the summer of 1779, when Robert Ful- 
ton was fourteen years of age, he used to go 
on hshing excursions to the Conestoga with 
young Christopher Gumpf and his father De- 
ter Gumpf. The okl gentleman had a small 
Hatboat, which he had kept secured to the 
trunk of a tree bj^ a chain and padlock for his 
own accommodation, lie generally required 
the boys to pole the boat from place to place 
in the creek during the fishing. Returning 
home one evening, Robert observed to Chris- 
topher that he was very tired using that pole, 
and Christopher agreed with him that it was 
very hard work. 

Innnediately following this Robert went to 
Britain township for a few days' visit at his 
aunt's, and while there he planned and com- 
pleted a small working model of a fishing boat 
with paddle wheels.' On leaving his aunt's 
he placed the model in the garret, with the 
request that it should not be destroyed. Many 
years afterward that simple model w^as the 
attraction of friends, and became, instead of 
lumber in the garret, an ornament in the 
aunt's parlor, who prized it highly. That 
model was the result of Robert's fishing ex- 
cursions with Christopher Gumpf; and when 
he returned from his aunt's he told Christo- 
pher that he must make a set of paddles to 
work at the side of the boat to be operated by 
a double crank, and then they could pro]:)el the 



Robert Fulton 151 

old gentleman's lisliing boat with greater ease. 
Two arms or pieces of timber were then fas- 
tened together at right angles, with a paddle 
at each end, and the crank was attached to 
the boat across it near the stern, with the 
l)addle operating on a pivot as a rudder; and 
Fulton's first invention was tried on the Con- 
estoga Kiver, opposite Rockford, in the pres- 
ence of Deter and Christopher Gunipf. The 
boys were so pleased with the experiment that 
they hid the paddles in the bushes on the 
shore, lest others might use and break them, 
and attached them to the boat whenever they 
chose; and they thus enjoyed very many fish- 
ing excursions. 

There are many other anecdotes of this early 
period in Fulton's life which show that the 
boy was constantly occupied with mechanical 
projects, some of them quite visionary in their 
character and others of practical value. Dur- 
ing all these years his skill in drawing kept 
his pencil in active use. His boyhood was in 
the time of the Revolutionary War, and young 
Fulton was a most ardent American. He had 
a genius for caricature, and employed it in 
making grotesque sketches of the Hessian 
soldiers who were stationed at Lancaster for 
the protection of the Tory inhabitants and the 
suppression of the patriots. In the neighbor- 
hood of the camping ground of the soldiers 
there was generally quite an assemblage of the 



152 Youth of Famous Americans 

townspeople. Daily, about sunset, there were 
lights between the Whig and Tory boys. These 
collisions became so frequent that a rope was 
stretched across the street as a sort of neutral 
line, and if either party ventured beyond that 
rope, there was sure to be trouble. 

Robert Fulton made a sketch of the spot, 
and drew upon his imagination sufficiently to 
represent the patriot boys crossing the rope 
and thrashing the Tories. When his picture 
was complete he showed it in the workshops, 
where it attracted much attention. It did 
more, as it gave a hint to the loyal American 
boys which they proceeded to act upon. The 
very next evening, after the exhibition of the 
sketch, they jumped the rope and brought on 
a fight of such a serious character that the 
town authorities interfered and prohibited all 
gatherings of the same kind in the future. 
The instigator of the performance did not 
have an active hand in it — not from any per- 
sonal reluctance, but because he had promised 
his mother that he would not. A few of his 
sketches at this period are still in existence, 
but the most of them fell into Tory hands and 
were destroyed. 

As he grew older it became necessary for 
young Fulton to choose a permanent occupa- 
tion, lie was more fond of the pencil and 
brush than of anything else, and his ambition 
turned him in th(^ direction of art. The cele- 



Robert Fulton 153 

bra ted American painter, Benjamin West, 
was a native of the county adjoining the one 
in which Fuhoii was born, and his father was 
an intimate friend of Robert Fulton, Sr. 
West had become very famous, and was now 
the favorite artist of George III of England. 
There is little doubt that his success had 
greatly stimulated Robert Fulton's desire to 
be an artist. 

Having made up his mind to follow art for 
a livelihood, Robert, at the age of seventeen, 
left Lancaster for Philadelphia, where he 
hoped to secure sufficient teaching to fit him- 
self to do successful work. He was very in- 
dustrious and painstaking, and his industry 
was soon rewarded. .FTe made many friends, 
among them Benjamin Franklin and other 
men of prominence, and through these friends 
his occupation became remunerative during 
the first year of his stay in Philadelphia. 

In the Philadelphia directory for 1785 the 
curious reader pauses at the following line : 

''Robert Fulton, Miniature Painter, Corner 
of Second and Walnut Street." 

He was more than a miniature painter, how- 
ever, though it was from that favorite branch 
of the art that he chiefly gained his liveli- 
hood. He painted portraits, landscapes, and 
allegorical pieces such as were popular at 
the time. He made drawings of machinery, 
buildings, and carriages, and, indeed, accepted 



154 Youth of Famous Americans 

j»'ladly all sorts of artistic work that c-aiiio to 
him. 

In the four years between Robert's seven- 
teenth and his twenty-first birthday he not 
only supported himself, but sent occasional 
help to his mother and sisters, and at their 
urgent invitation he decided to spend the date 
of his majority at home. With true nobility 
of spirit he celebrated his twenty-first birth- 
day by purchasing" a farm of eighty-four acres 
of land, which be presented to his mother as a 
home for her declining years. And he had 
enough left from his earnings to carry him to 
Europe, where he went on the advice and at 
the invitation of Benjamin West. 




AMUKL F. B. MOR>K 



SAMUEL F. B. MORSE 

The inventor of the telegraph, Samuel Fin- 
ley Breese Morse, was descended from ances- 
tors distinguished for intelligence, energy, 
independence of thinking, genuine pluck, and 
noble integrity. 

Young Morse saw Puritanism at its best. 
Parental discipline in the Morse household 
was not severe, but genuine religion, which 
sweetened and beautified the family life and 
which was taught not only as the basis of 
right action but the source of the highest 
enjoyment, pervaded the home life like an 
atmosphere. 

The boy who was "to put a girdle around the 
earth in forty minutes," thus realizing 
Shakespeare's dream, was sent when he was 
four years of age to a school kept by an old 
lady. She was an invalid, and unable to leave 
her chair. She was known as "Old Ma'am 
Rand." Her school was in a small building 
opposite the public schoolhouse. She governed 
her unruly little flock with a long rattan, 
which reached across the small room in whicli 
they were gathered. One of her punishments 
was pinning the young culprits to her own 
•dress. The first essays at painting, or, rather, 



158 Youth of Famous Americans 

drawing, of the young artist were quite dis- 
couraging; for he, unfortunately, had selected 
the old lady's face as his model, a chest of 
drawers for his canvas, and a pin for his pen- 
cil. We do not know how successful he was 
in this his first attempt, but his reward was 
an attachment by a large pin to the old lady's 
dress. In his struggles to get free the dress 
parted and was dragged to a distant part of 
the room, but not out of reach of the terrible 
rattan, which descended vigorously on his 
devoted head. 

"Old Ma'am Rand" must have had some- 
thing in her, however, as a teacher, for at 
seven years of age young Morse was ready 
to be sent to a preparatory school, and at four- 
teen he was admitted to the freshman class in 
Yale. Although through his college course, 
and for many years after, Samuel Morse's 
great specialty was painting, and his chief 
ambition to become an artist, he early began 
to show an interest in the studies which led 
to his immortal invention. While he was a 
sophomore in college he wrote home to his 
parents this interesting note : 

"A remarkable phenomenon appeared here 
a few days ago. A meteor passed some dis- 
tance from the town and burst in Fairfield 
County; large pieces of stone were contained 
in it, and lay scattered around a number of 
miles. Mr. Silliman went with Mr. Kingsley 



Samuel F. B. Morse 159 

to see a piece of this stone; lie applied a mag- 
net to it, and by its attraction found it to 
contain iron. The explosion was very loud; 
it was heard here in New Haven while the 
students were in at prayers; I heard it at the 
same time. I will try and obtain a piece of 
the stone of Mr. Silliman, and keep it to bring 
home for a curiosity." 

After graduation young Morse, still having 
an ambition for a great career as an artist, 
went abroad to study. In his first letter home 
there is a paragraph which seems almost pro- 
phetic of his great invention, which was not 
to come for many years. After announcing 
to his parents his safety he says: 

"I only wish you had this letter now to re- 
lieve your minds from anxiety, for while I am 
writing I can imagine mother washing that 
she could hear of my arrival and thinking of 
thousands of accidents which may have be- 
fallen me. I wish that in an instant I could 
communicate the information ; but three thou- 
sand miles are not passed over in an instant, 
and we must wait four long weeks before we 
can hear from each other." 

On the outside of this letter, yellow with 
age, is written in his own hand with pencil, 
but at what date is unknown, probably toward 
the end of his life, these words : "Longing for 
a telegraph even in this letter." 

About this time young Morse made a very 



160 Youth of Famous Americans 

happy friendship with Washington Allston, 
who introduced him to Benjamin West, him- 
self a great American artist, and then in the 
height of his fame. Morse has given us some 
striking pictures of the fidelity of West "as an 
instructor. He says that on one occasion, 
anxious to appear in the most favorable light 
before West, he had occupied himself for two 
weeks in making a finished drawing from a 
small cast of the Farnese Hercules. Mr. West, 
after strict scrutiny^ for some minutes, and 
giving the young artist many commendations, 
handed it again to him, saying, "Very well, 
sir, very well ; go on and finish it." 

"It is finished," replied Morse. 

"O no," said Mr. West; "look here, and here, 
and here," pointing to many unfinished places 
which had escaped the untutored eye of the 
young student. No sooner w^ere they pointed 
out, however, than they were felt, and a week 
longer was devoted to a more careful finishing 
of the drawing, until, full of confidence, he 
again presented it to the critical eyes of Mr. 
West. Still more encouraging and flattering 
expressions were lavished upon the draw- 
ing, but on returning it the advice was again 
given, "Very w^ell, indeed, sir; go on and fin- 
ish it." 

"Is it not finished?" asked Morse, almost 
discouraged. 

"Not yet," replied West; "see, you have not 



Samuel F. B. Morse 161 

marked that muscle nor the articulations of 
the finger joints." 

Determined not to be answered by the con- 
stant "Go and finish it" of Mr. West, Morse 
again diligently spent three or four days re- 
touching and renewing his drawing, resolved, 
if possible, to elicit from his severe critic an 
acknowledgment that it was at length finished. 
He was not, however, more successful than be- 
fore; the drawing was acknowledged to be ex- 
ceedingly good — "very clever, indeed;" but all 
its praises were closed by the repetition of the 
advice, "Well, sir, go and finish it." 

"I cannot finish it," said Morse, almost in 
despair. 

"Well," answered West, "I have tried you 
long enough. Now, sir, you have learned more 
by this drawing than you would have accom- 
plished in double the time by a dozen half- 
finished beginnings. It is not numerous draw- 
ings, but the character of one, which makes a 
thorough draughtsman. Finish one picture, 
sir, and you are a painter." 

At this time Benjamin West was painting 
his "Christ Rejected." Young Morse called 
on him one day when he was needing a model 
for the hands of the Saviour. The old gentle- 
man went over to him and began a critical 
examination of the young man's hands,' and 
at length said, "Let me tie you with this cord, 
and take that place while I paint in the hands 
11 



162 Youth of Famous Americans 

of our Saviour." Morse, of course, complied; 
and when West hnished his work, and was 
releasing him, he said, "You may say now, if 
you please, you had a hand in this picture." 

Morse, who was throughout his entire life 
a most reverent and devout Christian, after- 
ward said that no words could describe the 
feeling which came over him at the thought 
that even in that small way he was standing 
in the place of his divine Lord. 

On returning to America, in 1816, the 
young artist set up a studio in Boston. There 
his picture, "The Judgment of Jupiter" was 
opened for exhibition. The fame of the young 
artist had preceded him, and hundreds of peo- 
ple went to see a picture by the favored pupil 
of Allston and West. He set up his easel with 
the confident expectation that his fame and 
his work would bring him orders and money. 
But, though he had. many invitations to din- 
ner by the wealthiest citizens of Boston, an 
entire year dragged its weary length along 
without a single offer for his picture or one 
order for an historical work. His mind was 
too active and earnest for such a life as this. 
In the evenings at home he meditated an in- 
vention by which a great improvement could 
be made in the common pump, and one that 
could be adapted to the forcing-pump in the 
fire engine. His brother, Sidney E. Morse, 
two years younger than he, entered into the 



Samuel F. B. Morse 163 

project with him, and they completed the in- 
vention and secured a patent. This was the 
beginning of his life as an inventor. 

No doubt if he had found great success as a 
painter, so that his time had been fully occu- 
pied, the greatest gift of all which God had 
bestowed upon him for the blessing of the 
world would have lain dormant, like the man 
in the Gospel who hid his talent in a napkin. 
And so, as in many other cases in history, the 
greatest blessing that came in the life of 
Samuel Morse was received through bitter 
disappointment and defeat. 



HIRAM POWERS 

IIiRAM Powers, the great American sculptor, 
though born in Vermont in 1805, was taken 
by his father at the age of fourteen on the 
long journey to Ohio, where they settled near 
Cincinnati on a farm. Unhappily, it was 
badly located in the neighborhood of a marsh, 
the miasma from which affected the whole 
family with fever, causing the death of the 
father. The family was, in consequence of 
this double disaster, broken up and scattered. 
Hiram, the future sculptor, was disabled by 
his illness, and incapacitated for work for a 
year. At length he obtained a situation in 
a produce store in Cincinnati, his business 
being to watch the wagons that came into 
town bringing wheat and whisky, and direct 
them to his employer, and afterward roll the 
barrels in and out of the building. He con- 
tinued this employment until the firm broke 
up and he was forced to look elsewhere for 
a livelihood. 

At last he fell in with a worthy man who 
was a clockmaker 'and organ builder. This 
man employed him in collecting bad debts in 
the surrounding country. Mounted on an old 
horse," in what was rather an adventurous pur- 



166 Youth of Famous Americans 

suit in those dtiyii, in the West, young Powers 
was so successful that, after collecting the 
debts, his eiiiidoyer i^roposed to set hiui at 
work iu the clock and oi'gan factory, llirani 
could afford to refuse no proposition that 
promised him bread and clothes, for he was 
often walking the street hungry, with his arms 
pressed close to his side to conceal the holes 
in his coat sleeves. So he went into the shop, 
and the master gave him some brass plates to 
thin down with the file. They were parts of 
the stops of an organ he was building, and 
required to be very nicely leveled and polished ; 
but his business was only to prepare them for 
the finisher; the boss was to come in, after a 
day or two, and see how he got along. 

Now, young Powers had always had a me- 
chanical turn, and had whittled out a great 
many toys, and made a great many pewter 
guns in boyhood. He took hold, therefore, of 
the brass plates and the files with a confidence 
that he could surprise his employer; and, al- 
though he blistered his hands badly, he stuck 
to them with a will. His employer did not 
look in for several days, and when he did come 
several plates were already finished. He took 
one up and cast his eye along it, then put it 
upon a level table and cast his eye under it, 
and, finally, bringing it down face to face 
witli another of the plates, lifted that up by 
mere cohesive attraction. The organ builder 



Hiram Powers 167 

said nothing to Powers, but, calling in his 
head workman, he cried, "Here, Joe, is the 
way I want them plates finished!" The truth 
was the boy at once greatly surpassed the 
finisher at his own business, by mere nicety 
of eye and determination of spirit. From that 
moment his employer took him into his con- 
fidence. His heart went out to the lad, and 
he soon gave him the superintendence of all 
his machinery. Hiram lived in the master's 
family, and for the first time in his life he 
felt his future secure. 

There was a machine for cutting clock- 
wheels in the shop which, though very valu- 
able, seemed to Powers capable of being much 
simplified and improved. The chief hands, 
jealous of the boy's favor with the boss, 
laughed at his suggestions of improvement in 
a machine which had come all the way from 
Connecticut, where the foreman "guessed they 
knew something about clocks." There was 
an old silver bull's-eye watch hanging in the 
shop — too poor to steal — which had, however, 
excited the boy's cupidity. He told the master 
that if he would give him that watch he would 
undertake to make a new machine, much sim- 
pler and more efiicient than the old one. He 
agreed, and after ten days' labor Powers so 
simplified and improved the plan that his new 
machine would cut twice as many wheels in a 
day, and cut them much more perfectly. This 



168 Youth of Famous Americans 

established his reputation with the workmen 
as well as the master. Speaking of it after 
he had become famous, he said: "The old 
watch has ticked all my children into exist- 
ence, and three of them out of this world. It 
still hangs at the head of my bed." 

It was about this time that young Powers 
visited the museum in Cincinnati, where he 
noticed particularly an elephant's tusk broken 
and held together by iron hoops, and a plaster 
cast of Houdon's "Washington," the first bust 
he had ever seen. It strangely excited his 
curiosity, and he wondered how it was made: 
There happening then to be in the city a Ger- 
man sculptor engaged on a bust of General 
Jackson, Powers sought his acquaintance, and 
learned from him the elements of his art. 
Being an apt pupil — for nature was directing 
his hand — he at once turned the information 
he received to account by modeling with 
steady persistence, in beeswax, the head of the 
little daughter of a gentleman of the city, and 
found that he secured an excellent likeness in 
expression. Soon after the famous Mrs. Trol- 
lope made her appearance at Cincinnati, on 
her American tour, accompanied by the clever 
French artist, Hervieu, who illustrated a num- 
ber of her works. By agreement. Powers 
modeled a bust of this sketcher in exchange 
for a portrait of himself by the painter. These, 
however, w^ere but first attempts. It was not 



Hiram Powers 169 

till some time after that a peculiar opportu- 
nity presented itself to advance his employ- 
ment as a bust-maker. His own description 
of it, related to Dr. Henry W. Bellows in his 
Seven Sittings ivith Powers the Sculptor, is of 
extraordinary interest. The story Powers told 
was as follows : 

"A Frenchman from New Orleans had 
0})ened a museum in Cincinnati in which he 
found his fine specimens of natural history 
less attractive than some other more question- 
able objects. Among- these were certain wax 
figures. He had, however, one lot which had 
been badly broken in transportation, and he 
had been advised to apply to me to restore 
them. I went to the room, and found Lorenzo 
Dow, John Quincy Adams, Miss Temple, and 
Charlotte Corday, with sundry other people's 
images, in a very promiscuous condition — 
some w^th arms, and some with noses, and 
some without either. We concluded that 
something entirely new, to be made from the 
old materials, was easier than any repairs ; and 
I proposed to take Lorenzo Dow's head home, 
and convert him into the King of the Canni- 
bal Islands. The Frenchman was meanwhile 
to make his body — 'fit body to fit head.' I took 
the head home, and, thrusting my hand into 
the hollow, bulged out the lanky cheeks, put 
two alligator's tusks into the place of the eye- 
teeth, and soon finished my part of the work. 



170 Youth of Famous Americans 

A day or two after I was horrified to see large 
placards upon the city walls announcing the 
arrival of a great curiosity, the actual em- 
balmed body of a South Sea man-eater, se- 
cured at immense expense, etc. I told my em- 
ployer that his audience would certainly tear 
down his museum when they came to find out 
how badly they were sold, and I resolved my- 
self not to go near the i)lace. But a few nights 
showed the public to be very easily pleased. 
The figure dre^w innnensely, and I was soon, 
with my old employer's full consent, installed 
as inventor, wax-figure maker, and general 
mechanical contriver in the museum. 

"One of the first things I undertook, in 
company with Ilervieu, was a representation 
of the infernal regions after Dante's descrip- 
tion. Behind a grating I made certain dark 
grottoes, full of stalactites and stalagmites, 
with shadowy ghosts and pitchforked figures, 
all calculated to work on the easily excited 
imaginations of a Western audience, as the 
West then was. I found it very popular and 
attractive ; but occasionally some countryman 
would suggest to his fellow-spectator that a 
little motion in the figures w^ould add much 
to the reality of the show. After much re- 
flection I concluded to go in among the figures 
dressed like the evil one, in a dark robe, with 
a death's-head and crossbones wrought up"on 
it, and with a lobster's claw for a nose. I had 



Hiram Powers 171 

bought aud iixcd ii[» an old electrical machine, 
and connected it with a wire, so that, from a 
wand ill my hand, 1 could discharge quite a 
serious shock upon anybody venturing too near 
the grating. The plan worked admirably, and 
excited great interest ; but I found acting the 
part of wax figure two hours every evening in 
the cold no sinecure, and was put to my wits 
to devise a figure that could be moved by 
strings, and which would fill my place. I suc- 
ceeded so well that it ended in my inventing a 
whole series of automata, for which the old 
\yax figures furnished the materials, in part, 
and which became so popular" and so reward- 
ing that I was kept seven years at the busi- 
ness, my emi)loyer promising me, from time 
to time, an interest in the business, which he 
quite forgot to fulfill." 

From these incongruous pursuits the artist 
— for such he was really becoming — was re- 
lieved by the generous appreciation of a 
wealthy resident and benefactor of Cincin- 
nati, Mr. Nicholas Longworth. This fine- 
hearted gentleman sought out the worthy and 
struggling youth, and on his own motion sent 
him to Europe at his expense to study his art 
as a sculptor. 




MATTHEW SIMPSON 



MATTHEW SIMPSON 

Matthew Simpson, though bom in the bright 
June days of 1811, was ushered into a home 
full of care and sorrow. The father was ill, 
and the mother was so burdened and the baby 
boy so active and troublesome that she one 
day said to a friend, who afterward twitted 
her about it, that it would be a mercy if 
Matthew should die, as she did not believe, if 
he lived, he would ever have any sense. 

He was not sent to school, but seeing his 
sisters with their books he was anxious to 
read also. He took up the matter on his own 
hook, and learned the alphabet and some spell- 
ing, so that at three years of age he could read. 
In after years he could never remember the 
time he could not read. When he was from 
four to six years of age ministers staying at 
the house would sometimes ask him if he 
could read. At such questions he was both 
indignant and astonished. When a little over 
four years of age, he came accidentally on an 
old copy of the multiplication table, and 
noticed that there were a few places in the 
table that were a little difficult for him, and at 
which he hesitated, and in after life he occi^- 
sionally found himself hesitating at the same 
places that troubled him then. 



176 Youth of Famous Americans 

When between eleven and tvveh^e years of 
age lie went into liis uncle's place of business 
(he was a manufacturer of weavers' reeds), 
not only to share in the labor, but to keep the 
accounts. His uncle's partner had two young- 
men boarding with him who were attending an 
academy and studying Latin. Matthew de- 
sired to join them, but his uncle thought he 
was not old enough for this. In the latter 
part of November, however, just as his uncle 
was about leaving for Columbus, O., to attend 
the sessions of the Senate, of which he was 
then a member, the wife of the partner was 
taken suddenly ill, and, at their earnest re- 
quest, these young students were taken into 
Mrs. Simpson's family for a short time, until 
she should recover. The request of the young 
men that Matthew should study with them 
was renewed. He obtained the privilege of 
spending his spare time in study on condition 
of his first doing every day the half of a man's 
work in the shop. This condition he gladly 
accepted. The uncle left home the last of 
November, and returned in the middle of 
February. In that time, in addition to per- 
forming his daily tasks, which were never 
omitted, he had studied Ross's Latin Gram- 
mar, read Hisioria, Sacra, four books of Caesar, 
a large part of Sallust's Catiline, and found 
himself sitting side by side with the young 
men who had begun some eighteen months 



Matthew Simpson 177 

before liiiu. On his retiirii home his uncle 
wished to ivnovv what he liad learned, and 
called upon him to read, and iinding he could 
render Latin so easily he was permitted to 
attend the academy. During the following- 
summer and winter he did so, and finished the 
Latin course, and also studied the Greek 
grammar. 

It became evident that he could have but 
one summer term at the academy for his 
Greek, and this was a short term of a little 
over four months. In the vacation he had 
read for his own pleasure a number of chap- 
ters in the Greek Testament, and was put 
with a classmate commencing the Gmeca 
Minora. The other boy was only of moderate 
ability, and was much fonder of amusement 
than of his studies. Knowing it to be his last 
session, young Simpson was exceedingly 
anxious to advance rapidly, and finding his 
classmate would not exert himself he begged 
to be permitted to proceed alone, but as that 
would double his work the teacher refused. 
Matthew secured his consent by a very shrewd 
device. The practice was to write composi- 
tions on every Saturday, and though Simpson 
disliked the exercise more than he did any- 
thing else he was so deeply interested in his 
favorite projects that he gave great study and 
attention to his next composition. It was in 
the form of a story in which he represented 
12 



178 Youth of Famous Americans 

two boys who set out to elinib the Hill of 
Knowledge. They had an able and experienced 
guide, who tied them both together. One of 
them was earnest to see all that could be seen 
on the hill, and anxious to breathe the pure 
air upon the toi). The other was easily tired, 
and disposed to rest by the way, thiidving he 
had time enough by and by to look at its 
sights. The one who was anxious to gain the 
top pleaded often with his guide to let him go 
on, but the guide refused, advising him to 
hunt for choice pebbles, or to gather some 
flowers by the way, while his mate was resting. 
After the reading of the composition the 
teacher smiled, and calling Matthew to him 
told him he might recite on Monday as far as 
he chose. The result was that in the re- 
mainder of that summer session he flnished 
the Graeca Minora, read the first volume of 
the Graeca Majora, a part of the poetry of the 
second volume, and a number of the books of 
Homer, completing what was then marked 
out in the neighboring colleges as the entire 
Greek course. 

The account which Matthew Simpson gives 
of his public profession of Christ is very sim- 
ple and straightforward. He was attending a 
camp meeting some three miles from Cadiz, O. 
It was at an evening service when a very re- 
markable religious interest had appeared dur- 
ing the day, and several young men, some of 



Matthew Simpson 179 

tlieiu very wild, had become awakened. Mat- 
thew conversed with some of these young men 
whom he knew, and immediately felt anxious 
that, by some means, proper influences should 
be thrown around them to preserve them from 
the temptations to which he knew they would 
be exposed. During the evening service he 
was not specially interested until, at the close 
of the service, those who were seeking religion 
were invited forward. A large number went, 
and, among them, a number of young men 
with whom he was acquainted. He felt deeply 
interested in the scene, and began to wonder 
why he, who had been so religiously educated, 
and whose life had been so guarded by Chris- 
tian influences, should not experience the 
same religious emotion as they. He drew 
near to the railing, and was standing ab- 
sorbed in thought, when he saw a short dis- 
tance from him, standing near the railing, a 
young man of religious family with whom he 
had formed a pleasant acquaintance, but who, 
like himself, was not a professed Christian. 
The thought suddenly occurred to him that 
possibly while he was not being benefited he 
might be, and, making his way through the 
crowd to him, Matthew Simpson laid his hand 
gently on his friend's shoulder, and asked him 
if lie would not like to go forward for prayer. 
Tho young man's head immediately dropped, 
tlie tears started from his eyes, nnd he snid to 



180 Youth of Famous Americans 

Siiiipsoii that lie would go if he would go with 
him. They went forward, found a place where 
they could kneel, and knelt down together. 
Matthew was very sincere, wished to be a 
servant of Christ, but did not feel any special 
earnestness of spirit. The young man who 
had gone with him was shortly after convert- 
ed, and was ever afterward throughout his life 
a devout Christian. At the close of the meet- 
ing, young Simpson returned home, said but 
little about his determination, but firmly re- 
solved from that day that, at the next oppor- 
tunity, he would unite with the Church, which 
he did. 

The exceedingly interesting experiences 
connected with the entrance of Matthew Simp- 
son upon the Christian ministry, which he was 
so highly to adorn, cannot better be told than 
in his own words as given in his Yale Lectures 
on Preaching. In one of these he says: 

"Trained religiously, I had come to a young 
man's years before making a public profession 
of religion. Occasionally, prior to my con- 
version, thoughts of the ministry sometimes 
flashed across my mind, but it was only a flash. 
After my conversion I was earnest for the 
welfare of others, and worked in various ways 
to promote the interests of the Church and 
humanity. Tlie conviction grew upon me that 
I must ])reach. T tried to put the thought 
away, because I feared I could never succeed. 



Matthew Simpson 181 

I saw the greatness of the work, and the re- 
])roach and poverty, the privation and suffer- 
ing, connected with the itinerant ministry. 
Two special difficulties were in my way : First, 
I had no gift to speak; all through my studies 
my fellow-students told me I could learn, but 
I could never be a speaker. In discussing pro- 
fessions they thought the law was out of the 
question for me, because I could never success- 
fully plead a cause. My voice was poor. I 
had always shunned declamation whenever it 
was possible to avoid it. I had an unconquer- 
able aversion to reciting other men's words, 
and whenever I attempted to declaim it was 
pronounced a failure. My associates believed, 
and I firmly believed, I could never make a 
speaker, so, when I felt the conviction that I 
must preach, the thought of the impossibility 
of preaching successfully made me question 
the reality of the call. At my work, and in 
my studies — for I spent three years in i)repar- 
ing for the profession of medicine — I was fre- 
quently in mental agony. 

"I think I should have resolutely rejected 
the idea, only that it seemed indissolubly con- 
nected w^ith my own salvation. I longed for 
some one who could tell me my duty. I fasted, 
and prayed for divine direction; but I found 
no rest until I read in the Bible a passage 
which seemed written especially for me : 
'Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and 



182 Youth of Famous Americans 

kail not unto lliiiK' own understaudiug. In 
all tliy ways ackiiuwlcdge him, and he shall 
direct thy i)aths.' I accepted it, and resolved 
to do whatever God by his providence should 
indicate. I never lisped to a friend the slight- 
est intimation of my mental agony, but began 
to take a more earnest part in church services. 
One Sabbath I felt a strong impression that I 
ought to speak to the people at night in prayer 
meeting, as we had no preaching. But I said 
to myself, 'How shall I^ My friends will 
think me foolish, for they know I cannot speak 
wdth interest^' Especially I dreaded the 
opinion of an uncle, who had been to me as a 
father, and who had superintended my educa- 
tion. While I was discussing this matter with 
myself my uncle came into the room, and, 
after a moment's hesitancy, said to me, 'Don't 
you think you could speak to the people to- 
night f I was surprised and startled, and 
asked him if he thought I ought to. He said, 
'Yes ; I think you might do good.' That night, 
by some strange coincidence, the house was 
crowded, and I made my first religious address 
to a public congregation. It was not written; 
it was not very well premeditated ; it was the 
simple and earnest out-gushing of a sincere 
heart. I was soon pressed to preach, but 
evaded all conversation on the subject as far 
as possible. 

"My second difficulty was that my mother 



Matthew Simpson 183 

was a widow. I was her only son, and the only 
child remaining at home. It seemed impos- 
sible to leave her. I feared it might almost 
break her heart to propose it. But as I saw 
the Church would probably call me, and as I 
had promised God to follow his openings, I one 
day, with great embarrassment, introduced the 
subject to my mother. After I had told her 
iny mental struggles, and what I believed God 
required, I paused. I shall never forget how 
she turned to me with a smile on her counte- 
nance, and her eyes suffused with tears, as she 
said, 'My son, I have been looking for this 
hour ever since you were born.' She then told 
me how she and my dying father, who left me 
an infant, consecrated me to God, and prayed 
that, if it were his will, I might become a 
minister. And yet that mother had never 
dropped a word or intimation in my hearing 
that she desired me to be a preacher. She be- 
lieved so fully in a divine call that she thought 
it wrong to bias the youthful mind with even 
a suggestion. That conversation settled my 
mind. What a blessing is a sainted mother! 
I can even now feel her hand upon my head, 
and I can hear the intonation of her voice in 
prayer." 




HARRIKT KKKCHI'.R SlOW 



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 

WiTKX Harriet Beeclier was eight years of 
age she had a favorite cat of whom she was 
very fond. Puss was attacked with fits, and 
in her paroxysms flew around the top of the 
wall, jumped onto the heads of the children, 
and scratched and tumbled up their hair in a 
frightful way. Her father. Dr. Lyman 
Beecher, shot the cat, and when she was cold 
and dead, and the little girl had subsided from 
her fright, her former fondness for her play- 
mate returned. She wrapped puss up nicely 
in a cloth, and got her brother to dig a grave 
and set up a flat stone for a monument. Then 
she went to her older sister, Catharine, and 
asked her to write an "epithet" — which was 
her rendering for "epitaph" — to put on the 
stone. Catharine Beecher was equal to any 
emergency, and wrote : 

"Here lies poor Kit, 
Who had a fit 
And acted queer : 
Killed with a gun, 
Her race is run. 
And she lies here." 

Harriet pasted this upon the stone, and was 
comforted. 



188 Youth of F'amous Americans 

Harriet Beecher grew into girlhood a hearty, 
rosy, strong child, with flying curls of sunny 
brown, and sweet, keen blue eyes, always ready 
for fun and play; a happy, frolicsome crea- 
ture. She says of herself, "I was educated 
first and foremost by Nature, wonderful, beau- 
tiful, everchanging as she is in that cloud- 
land, Litchfield." 

She ran wild among the trees and hills. 
She heard with rapture the pipe and trilling 
of the birds; she made friendly acquaintance 
with the small game aflight or afoot in the 
fields; she followed winding streams to their 
source; she sailed boats; listened to the rip- 
pling of the w^ater over the bright shallows; 
watched the sunlight in the shimmering depths 
of the deep pools, or the shining fish which 
darted out of sight or lazily floated in the sun. 
She gathered the first sweet wild flowers of 
the spring; had her secret places where lus- 
cious wild strawberries nodded upon their 
stems ; plucked gorgeous lilies and blazing 
poppies and the blue cornflower in the hayfield 
in the quivering heart of June, and gath- 
ered a stock of nuts in the dreamy days of 
October. 

But, fond of nature as was this little par- 
sonage girl, she very early gave promise of 
being a scholar. When she was five years of 
age she had been to school, learning to read 
very fluently, and, having a retentive memory, 



Harriet Beecher Stowe 189 

had committed twenty-seven hymns and two 
long chapters in the Bible. 

Her eagerness to read, which grew with 
every year of her life, was very natural in the 
home of a man like Lyman Beecher. The light 
literature which now floods every household 
was a thing unknown, and after reveling in 
the Arabian Nights she used to spend hours 
in the attic desperately searching among the 
sermons, treatises, tracts, and essays, which 
she secretly dragged from a barrel, for fresh 
food for her active mind. Once turning up a 
dissertation on Solomon's Song, she devoured 
it as a delicate morsel. At another time she 
was rewarded for several hours of toil in what 
she called "a weltering ocean of pamphlets" 
by bringing to light a fragment of Don 
Quixote, which was fraught with enchantment 
and read with a reckless disregard of the pos- 
sible objection of her parents. At this time 
the names of Scott, Byron, Moore, and Irving 
were fresh and new. Byron had not yet fin- 
ished his brief career, and Harriet's aunt put 
into her hands one day a volume containing 
"The Corsair." The little New England girl 
read it with wonder and delight, and thence- 
forth listened eagerly to whatever was said in 
the house concerning Byron. Not long after, 
she heard her father sorrowfully observe, "By- 
ron is dead — gone." She says : "I remember 
taking my basket for strawberries that after- 



190 Youth of Famous Americans 

noon and going over to a field on Chestnut 
HilL But I was too dispirited to do anything ; 
so I lay down among the daisies, and looked 
up into the blue sky, and thought of thai great 
eternity into which Byron had entered, and 
wondered how it might be with his soul." 

One of the events of the year in the parson- 
age at Litchfield, Conn., where the Beechers 
lived at this time, was the apple-cutting, when 
a barrel of cider apple sauce was to be made, 
and the boys and girls were pressed into serv- 
ice as assistants. The work was done in the 
kitchen, an immense shining brass kettle 
hanging over the fire in the deep chimney, and 
the whole family of children and servants 
gathered around, employed on the great bas- 
kets of apples and quinces. Dr. Beecher pre- 
sided at the apple peeler, turning the crank 
with great expedition, and one evening said 
to George, "Come, I'll tell you what we will 
do to make the evening go off : You and I will 
take turns and see who will tell the most out 
of Scott's novels." So at it they went, novel 
by novel, reciting scenes and incidents, which 
kept the children wide-awake, and made their 
work fly, while Harriet often made a correc- 
tion, or supplied with joyful eagornoss some 
point they had omitted. 

A favorite position for ITavrict during tliese 
girlhood days was to lay flat on the floor, i)()r- 
ing over the great family Bible, committing 



Harriet Beecher Stowe 191 

entire chapters to nieniory. She studied Para- 
dise Lost in the same maner. 

Lyman Beecher was an ideal father in the 
matter of encouraj»-in8- his children to intel- 
lectual activity. The rule of the household 
was that, if anyone had a j>ood thing", he must 
not keep it to himself; if he could say a funny 
thing, he was bound to say it; if a severe 
thing, no matter — the severer the better, if 
well put; everyone must be ready to take as 
well as give. The doctor never asked any 
favors of his children, nor stood upon his 
dignity, in encounters of wit or logic. When 
they grappled him, he taught them to grapple 
in dead earnest, and they well knew what they 
had to expect in return. 

When Harriet Beecher was eleven years old 
she wrote a composition in school, taking the 
negative side of the following question : "Can 
the Immortality of the Soul be Proved by the 
Light of Nature f ' This essay was read before 
the most distinguished people of Litchfield, 
who crowded the town hall at the school ex- 
hibition. Dr. Lyman Beecher, who knew 
nothing of Harriet's work, was greatly inter- 
ested in the argument of the essay, and at the 
close sought the principal and inquired, "Who 
wrote that composition^" "Your daughter, 
sir," was the answer, which plainly filled the 
father with pleased surprise. Llarriet, who 
was standing by and overheard the question 



192 Youth of Famous Americans 

and answer, afterward said, ''It was the proud- 
est moment of my life." 

When Harriet was yet in her early teens a 
great change came into the conditions of her 
daily life. Catharine, the oldest of the family, 
then a thoroughly educated and charming 
young lady, was engaged to marry Professor 
Alexander M. Fisher, of Yale College, a man 
already distinguished, and of great promise 
in his profession. He started for Europe in 
April, 1822, where he purposed to study and 
travel for a year before his. marriage. The 
ship Albion, in which he sailed, was lost, and 
only one of all its passengers and crew came 
back to tell the tale. The brilliant Catharine 
Beecher, lately so full of joy and hope, lost all 
the zest and enthusiasm out of her life, and 
fell into a dull and heavy melancholy, from 
which it seemed for a time that even her help- 
ful spirit and eminently sane and practical 
education could not rescue her. 

With the lapse of time she rallied to some 
extent, but felt that she must fly from the 
scenes which spoke so constantly and elo- 
quently of her lover and her lost hope, and 
seek relief from crushing thought in active 
work. She went to Hartford, Conn., and with 
the assistance of her younger sister, Mary, she 
opened a school for girls, which became 
famous under the name which it still preserves 
of the Hartford Female Seminary. 



Harriet Beecher Stowe 193 

Harriet Becchcr was confided to her sister's 
care, and leavinjj;- all the freedom and varied 
joys of child-life in the country town she set- 
tled seriously to work and remained at Hart- 
ford six years. During the latter part of the 
time she became an assistant tutor, teaching 
Latin and translating Virgil into English 
heroic verse, mingling her teaching, studies, 
and social diversions in the most delightful 
and profitable manner. 

While Harriet Beecher was not thought, by 
any means, tlie equal of her elder sister, the 
brilliant Catharine, in mental weight and 
power, and of a rather careless and unpracti- 
cal turn of mind, her unfailing good humor, 
unusual sincerity, together with a sleepy sort 
of wit, which was likely to flash out when least 
expected, caused her to be regarded as a 
charming and attractive personality. But, 
while her future career was dreamed of by no 
one, her classmates, who in after years re- 
called with pride their acquaintance with Har- 
riet Beecher, never remembered aught of her 
that was not generous and kind. 
13 



LYDIA HUNTLY SIGOURNEY 

Lydia IIuntly's childhood was passed very 
'happily under the most favorable circum- 
stances for mental and moral growth. She 
was born September 1, 1791, of good old New 
England stock, and during the years of her 
childliood her father was the manager of the 
very wealthy estate of Madame Lathrop. The 
little Lydia ranged at her will in her girlhood 
over this charming domain, delighted with the 
flowers and the fruits and making pets of the 
calves and the sheep, and all the domestic ani- 
mals about the place. One large black horse 
"of mild temperament" was her special love. 

The great mansion had a rambling old- 
fashioned garret which in the course of gen- 
erations had come to be almost a family 
museum. In that great lumber room were 
wonderful relics of the Revolution, a collection 
of twisted powderhorns, a brass-hilted sword, 
and old-fashioned cumbrous pistols, with a 
long-barreled gun, which little Lydia, in her 
active young imagination, invested with life, 
and she used to talk with them about Bunker 
Hill and Yorktown and Washington. 

In this fairy region of the garret there were 
immense trunks, too, and the little girl im- 



196 Youth of Famous Americans 

agined that they contained untold treasures. 
She was not allowed to rummage them, but 
happily one of them was open and empty, and 
lined with sheets of printed hymns. She 
stretched herself within its w^lls and perused 
those hymns, being able to read at three years 
old. A little later she made use of that hiding 
place for a more questionable purpose. Find- 
ing a borrowed copy of The Mysteries of 
Udolpho in the house, and perceiving that it 
was purposely hidden from childish hands, 
she watched for intervals when it might be 
abstracted unobserved, and, taking refuge in 
her trunk, like the famous cynic in his tub, 
she reveled among the tragic scenes of Mrs. 
Radcliffe; finding, however, no terror so for- 
midable as an approaching footstep, when, 
hiding the volume, she leaped lightly from her 
cavernous study. It was her first surreptitious 
satisfaction, and was not partaken without 
remorse. Yet the fascination of that fearful 
fiction-book seemed to her too strong to be 
resisted. 

In the midst of this charming life of the 
old New England farmhouse she had the hap- 
piest childhood. The mental and moral atmos- 
phere was bright and clear. Her tastes and 
habits were all simple; and good health of 
body and soul led to contentment. She had 
an excellent guide to her first studies in 
Madame Lathrop, who was a genuine lady of 



Lydia Huntly Sigourney 197 

the old school, and who knew well the best 
English literature of her day. Heading, as 
we have seen, at three years old, Lydia became 
such a proficient that at the age of eight she 
actually planned and connnenced a novel in 
the epistolary style, with the scene partly laid 
in Italy — a thing of the least consecjuence, of 
course, if it had been finished, but noticeable 
enough in connection with her literary career. 
Before she was fourteen years of age she had 
taken so kindly to Latin as to employ herself 
in translations from the Aeneid, had mastered 
considerable French and Llebrew, and had 
written a rhythmical translation of the story 
of Jonah, besides much history and mental 
philosophy. 

Among other acquisitions in this youthful 
period were a great deal of painting and draw- 
ing, of which little came, while a great good 
resulted from acquaintance with books, and 
especially of the poets. 

There was one excellent practice in the pur- 
suit of literature, well worthy of notice by 
any ambitious youth. Committing passages 
from the poets to memory was a systematic 
exercise. Cowper and Goldsmith were among 
the first chosen for that purpose. The melody 
of the latter won both the ear and the heart, 
and "The Deserted Village" or "The Travel- 
ler" was voicelessly repeated after retiring at 
night. 



198 Youth of Famous Americans 

From her earUest girlhood Lydia Iluiitly. 
was inspired with a love of teaching. In her 
earliest years, she tells us, "the doll genus were 
not at all essential to my happiness. They 
were of the most consequence when, marshaled 
in the character of pupils, I installed myself 
as their teacher." As she grew older she pur- 
sued the idea with a passionate attachment. 
When she was about the age of eighteen she 
seriously set about its accomplishment. Her 
father marveled at her preference, but not 
more than she at his proposal to fit up one of 
the pleasantest rooms in the house for her 
chosen purpose. Her own description of this 
experiment is not without interest. She 
writes : 

"With what exultation I welcomed a new 
long desk and benches, neatly made of fair 
white wood! To these I proceeded to add an 
hourglass, and a few other articles of con- 
venience and adornment. My active imagina- 
tion peopled the room with attentive scholars, 
and I meditated the opening address, which, 
I trusted, would win their hearts, and the rules 
which were to regulate their conduct. With- 
out delay I set forth to obtain those person- 
ages, bearing a prospectus, very beautifully 
written, of an extensive course of English 
studies, with instruction in needlework. My 
slight knowledge of the world induced me to 
offer it courageously to ladies in their parlors. 



Lydia Huntly Sigourney 199 

or fathers in their stores, who had daughters 
of an age adapted to my course. I did not 
anticipate the difficulty of one at so early an 
age suddenly installing herself in a position 
of that nature, especially among her own peo- 
ple. Day after day I returned from my walk 
of solicitation without a name on my cata- 
logue. Yet with every morning came fresh 
zeal to persevere. At length, wearied with 
fruitless pedestrian excursions, and still more 
depressing refusals, I opened my school with 
two sweet little girls of eleven and nine years 
old. Consolatory \:as it to my chastened van- 
ity that they were of the highest and most 
wealthy families among us. Cousins were 
they, both bearing the aristocratic name of 
Lathrop. Very happy was I with these plastic 
and lovely beings. Six hours of five days in 
the week, besides three on Saturday, did I 
sedulously devote to them, questioning, sim- 
plifying, illustrating, and impressing various 
departments of knowledge, as though a larger 
class were auditors. A young lady from Mas- 
sachusetts, of the name of Bliss, being in town 
for a short time, also Joined us during that 
interval, to pursue drawing, and painting in 
water colors. At the close of our term, or 
quarter, as it was then called, was an elabo- 
rate examination in all the studies, with 
which the invited guests signified their entire 
apiDrobation." 



200 Youth of Famous Americans 

This and other experiments continued f,or 
some time, all of them interesting, but none 
of them very remunerative in money until she 
met Mr. Charles Sigourney, an accomplished 
gentleman, who won her heart and under 
whose name she gained her great literary fame 
and accomplished the work which won her 
literary renown. 

Mrs. Sigourney 's valedictory, written but a 
few weeks before her death, is very character- 
istic of her cheerful, beneficent, and un- 
troubled life : 

"Here is my Valedictoiy. I bring 
A baslvet of dried fruits — autumnal leaves. 
And mosses, pressed from ocean's sunless tides. 
I strew them votive at your feet, sweet friends. 
Who've listened to me long — with grateful thanks. 
For favoring smiles, that have sustained and cheered 
All weariness. 

"I never wrote for fame— 
The payment seemed not to be worth the toil ; 
But wheresoe'er the liind affections sought 
To mix themselves by music with the mind, 
That was my inspiration and delight. 

"And you. from many a lustrum, have not frowned 
Upon my lingering strain. I'atient you've been. 
Even as the charity that never fails ; 
And pouring o'er my heart the gentlest tides 
Of love and commendation. So I tal^e 
These tender memories to my pillowed turf. 
Blessing you for them when I breathe no more. 
Heaven's peace be with you all I 

Fai'ewell ! Farewell !" 




GEORGE PEABODY 



GEORGE PEABODY 

It is an old proverb that "The child is 
father to the man;" 'and in no small degree 
this can be said of many of the great person- 
alities who make and adorn human history. 
This was eminently true of George Peabodj^ 
one of the noblest philanthropists the world 
has ever yet known. His childhood fore- 
shadowed the glory of his later years ; and yet, 
his childish years were not marked by incident, 
or memorable for peculiarity. While he was 
regarded as having some eccentricities as he 
grew older, his childhood was not in any sense 
that of an oddity. His neighbors remembered 
him in after years as a good boy, a faithful 
son, an industrious student, and an honest 
youth. True, they sometimes called him a 
"mother boy," but that was not because he was 
shy and effeminate, and wanting in boyish 
energy and daring, but because he loved his 
mother and it was the joy of his young life 
to add anything to her happiness. 

The future banker and philanthropist was 
born a poor boy, in the town of Danvers, 
Mass., on the 18th day of February, 1795 ; not 
at all in abject poverty, but in circumstances 
which afforded him but little opportunity for 



204 Youth of Famous Americans 

education, save for the first ten years of liis 
life in the common schools. Hon. Alfred A. 
Abbott, at the laying of the corner stone of 
the Peabody Institute, in Danvers, remarked 
concerning this Danvers boy : "The character 
and history of Mr. Peabody have by the 
natural course of things become so familiar to 
us within the last year that, like his name, 
they have almost come to be household prop- 
erty — how, nearly threescore years ago, in a 
very humble house in this then quiet village, 
he was born, the son of respectable parents, 
but in humble circumstances; how, from the 
common schools of the parish, such as they 
were from 1803 to 1807, to use his own simple 
words, he obtained the limited education his 
parents' means could afford, but to the princi- 
ples then inculcated owing much of the foun- 
dation for such success as Heaven has been 
pleased to grant him during a long business 
life." 

In his native place as much as anywhere 
George Peabody's memory is precious. And, 
however it may be with prophets, with this 
successful and beneficent merchant it did not 
prove true that he is "not without honor save 
in his own country and among his own peo- 
ple." In fact, the town where he was born is 
now called by his name. First, it was a part 
of Salem; then, for a century, it was known 
as Danvers; for a while it was called South 



George Peabody 205 

Daiivers ; and now for a generation it has been 
known as Peabody, in honor of the poor boy- 
born in its midst. 

From a child George Peabody had to rely 
on his own exertion. At the age of eleven he 
was apprenticed to a Mr. Silvester Proctor, 
who kept a country store and sold a general 
variety of groceries, drugs, and numerous 
other things. Here for four years he was a 
most faithful clerk, giving great satisfaction 
by his honesty, promptness, and fidelity. But 
at the age of fifteen he began to be discon- 
tented. He longed for a change, and for a 
larger field of action. He wanted to engage 
in business on a larger scale. Finally he gave 
up his place and went for a visit to his grand- 
father, to Thetford, Vt. Jeremiah Dodge, 
George's grandfather, lived in a small, neat, 
white two-story house a little out of the vil- 
lage. They were very quiet, unobtrusive 
Yankee people, the Dodges, and George Pea- 
body's year which he spent with his grand- 
parents must have been a very unexciting one. 
At the end of a year's visit, he started on his 
return home, and on the trip spent a night at 
a tavern in Concord, N. H., where he paid for 
his entertainment by sawing wood the next 
morning. Tliat year in the little town had 
evidently a pleasant place in the boy's memory, 
for when he came to be a very rich man and 
was scattering his benefactions everywhere 



206 Youth of Famous Americans 

he sent several thousand dollars into that little 
town to build a public library. 

On his return from Vermont George joined 
his elder brother, David Peabody, in a dry 
goods store in Newburyport, Mass. This was 
in 1811. Here he was the same faithful young 
fellow, exact and prompt in business and win- 
ning the respect of all who knew him. It is 
said that the first money he ever earned out- 
side of the small pittance he received as a 
clerk was for writing ballots for the Federal 
Party in Newbury port. This was before the 
day of printed votes. His penmanship was 
superior in beauty. His letters written at this 
time were usually brief and very much to the 
point; but they were easily read and espe- 
cially enjoyable because of his clear and 
beautiful handwriting. 

During young Peabody's stay in Newbury- 
port there occurred a great fire which de- 
stroyed a large amount of property and by 
the burning of his brother's store was the 
means of causing him to leave that town. The 
young clerk was the first to give the alarm. 
He was putting up the shutters at the store 
when he discovered the fire, but it was too late 
to save a great portion of the business section 
of the town. 

The burning of his brother's store left 
George Peabody without employment. But 
he was not to eat the bread of idleness. He 



George Peabody 207 

sought for employineiit, and his uncle, John 
Peabody, who had settled in Georgetown, near 
Washington, D. C, invited him to become his 
commercial assistant. To the South for the 
first time he went; and there he stayed two 
years, managing with peculiar ability a large 
part of the business, though still in his teens. 
His honesty was unquestionable, his tact un- 
usual. Of course, he succeeded in winning 
friends and securing trade. 

In his youthful business days George Pea- 
body gave evidence in many ways of the busi- 
ness characteristics of his more mature life. 
There lived in Salem at this time a hackman 
named David, who was more remarkable for 
his independence and plain speaking than for 
the quality of his accommodation. His prices, 
also, were below those of his competitors. 
Young Peabody rode with this hackman one 
day, and, on arriving at his destination, ten- 
dered the usual fee of fifty cents. 

"Here's your change, sir," said David, re- 
turning at the same time fifteen cents. 

"Change!" exclaimed Mr. Peabody. "Why, 
I'm not entitled to any." 

"Yes, you are; I don't tax but thirty-five 
cents for a ride in my hack." 

"How do you live, then?" 

"By fair dealing, sir. I don't believe in 
making a man pay more than a thing is worth 
just because I have got an opportunity." 



208 Youth of Famous Americans 

Feabody was so pleased with this reply that 
he ever after sought David out and gave him 
his patronage, which, however, in the nature 
of the case, was not very remunerative. 

One of the biographers of Peabody gives a 
very romantic and interesting story explain- 
ing the reason why he never married. He 
says: 

"When Mr. Peabody was just entering upon 
his career of success as a business man, in 
Baltimore, he met by chance a poor girl, who 
was but a child, but whose face and gentle 
manner attracted his notice. Questioning her 
in regard to parentage and surroundings, he 
found her in every way worthy his regard, and 
a fit subject for his benefaction. He at once 
•adopted her as his ward, and gave her an edu- 
cation. As she advanced in age her charms 
of person, as well as brightness of intellect, 
won the affections of her benefactor. Through 
this relationship he had an ample opportunity 
of watching her progress, and day by day her 
hold upon his affections grew stronger. 

"At length, as the ward bloomed into 
womanhood, though much her senior in years, 
Mr. Peabody offered her his hand and fortune. 
Greatly appreciating his generosity, and ac- 
knowledging her attachment for him as a 
father, she, with great feeling, confessed that 
honor compelled her to decline the acceptance 
of tliis his greatest act of generosity; inform- 



George Peabody 209 

iii,!,^ her suitor that her affections had been 
^■i\'en to another, a clerk in the employ of her 
benefactor. 

"Though much disappointed and grievously 
shocked, the philanthropist sent for his clerk ; 
and, learning from him that the engagement 
had been ^of long duration, Mr. Peabody at 
once established his successful rival in busi- 
ness, and soon after gave his benediction upon 
the marriage of his ward. This, it is said, 
was the first blow his heart received; and it 
is possible that from this episode came the 
inspiration that made the future of Mr. Pea- 
body so universally distinguished, and has 
rendered his name famous as a remarkable 
public benefactor." 
14 






'I" " ,, 




HORACE GREELEY 



HORACE GREELEY 

Horace Greeley, the great editor, was 
ushered into the world ^February 3, 1811, in 
Amherst, N. H. He was a feeble, sickly child, 
and could not even watch the falling of rain 
through a closed window without violent sick- 
ness, and only the tender care of his mother 
kept him alive. He seemed to learn almost 
by instinct. By the time he was three years 
old he read children's books with ease, and at 
four he read every book that he could get his 
hands on. He went to live at his grandfather's 
so as to be near the schoolhouse, and there, 
from three until six, he was the pet and pride 
of his school. He was a tow-headed little fel- 
low, with a quaint manner and a lisping and 
whining voice, but always good-humored. His 
especial forte was spelling. While yet a boy, 
he was prepared to be an editor in that re- 
spect. He spent hours at a time in spelling 
hard words for the very pleasure of it. Con- 
stant efforts were made in vain to puzzle him, 
even with the proper names of the Bible. In 
the weekly evening spelling matches he was 
chosen before grown-up men, and the side that 
got him was sure of a victory. He was then 
so young that he would often fall asleep be- 



214 Youth of Famous Americans 

fore it came liis turn to spell, and would have 
to be awakened. 

It was hard to keep young Horace in read- 
ing material. There was scarcely a book 
within seven miles which he did not borrow. 
He would read as he dressed in the morning, 
in every spare moment he could gain from 
other studies or from home and farm work 
throughout the day, and even as he went about 
on the lighter errands he would cling to his 
book like a wasp in a summer apple. His even- 
ings were spent in reading, lying coiled up in 
the corner of the great fireplace by the light 
of a pine knot. He paid no attention to those 
who stumbled over him or dragged him out 
by the legs, but rolled himself back and went 
on with his reading as if nothing had hap- 
pened. It took as long to arouse him and get 
him off to bed as it takes to get many a boy 
out of bed in the morning. 

His parents were very poor, and one of the 
leading men of the neighborhood offered to 
defray the expense of sending Horace to the 
Phillips Academy, at Exeter, and afterward 
to college. His parents, after full deliberation, 
firmly declined, and, though not having any 
decided opinion himself at the time, Horace 
often expressed in later life his gratitude at 
not having been indebted for what imperfect 
schooling he had to any except those from 
whom he had a right to expect it. My own 



Horace Greeley 215 

judj^meiit is that his parents and himself car- 
ried their independence to a morbid extreme 
in this case. It would no doubt have been a 
blessing to the man who gave him the assist- 
ance, and might have added largely to the 
equipment of the great editor if he had had the 
benefit of that college education. I relate the 
incident, however, because it is characteristic 
of the self-reliant and radically independent 
spirit of the man. 

By his eleventh year Horace had read 
Shakespeare, and had read all the histories 
and poets accessible to him. During all these 
years he was chopping logs, driving oxen, pil- 
ing up heaps of brush, and helping to do all 
the things connected with clearing up land and 
carrying on a backwoods farm. His farming 
closed with his fifteenth year, but these years 
of clearing land and lifting logs too heavy for 
his strength left their mark on him. It ac- 
counted for his shambling, clodhopper gait, 
which was common to many boys brought up 
to farm work, and especially to the work of 
clearing up land in the days before modern 
machinery came into play. Perhaps this also 
accounts for the fact that Horace Greeley not 
only never did care anything about clothes, 
but seemed to be utterly incapable of being 
fitted by clothes. In his farming days the 
family were all clothed in homemade gar- 
ments made out of coarse homespun linsey- 



216 Youth of Famous Americans 

woolsey material, dyed with butternut bark. 
Horace's usual dress in summer consisted 
of very short pantaloons of the above ma- 
terial, an unbuttoned tow shirt, and a 
homemade straw hat, supplemented in the 
winter by a jacket and shoes. Under- 
clothing was unheard of at either season. It 
has been stated that his clothing did not cost 
three dollars a year. One of his biographers, 
Mr. Parton, carefully estimates that up to the 
time he came of age there had never been 
fifty dollars in all expended on his clothes. 

From his earliest days Horace Greeley 
dreamed of being a printer. While only in 
his fifth or sixth year a blacksmith, observing 
the interest with which the child gazed at his 
work at the forge, said that he had better come 
and learn the trade with him. But Horace 
promptly replied, "No, I'm going to be a 
printer." When only eleven years old he un- 
dertook to realize this dream. Hearing that 
an apprentice was wanted in the newspaper 
office at Whitehall, he walked the five miles 
and applied for it in person, but was rejected 
on account of his youth. 

Now that he was fifteen years old, he deter- 
mined that the time had come to begin what 
he supposed would be his lifework. He an- 
swered an advertisement of the publishers of 
the Northern Spectator, at East Poultney, Vt., 
now small and decayed, but at that time 



Horace Greeley 217 

quite an enterprising village. This paper was 
published by a stock company. The manager 
was a Mr. Amos Bliss, and the scene of Hor- 
ace's application has been graphically related 
by him. He was in his garden, when his at- 
tention was drawn by a thin and whining 
voice behind him asking if he was "the man 
that carried on the printing office," and 
whether he didn't "want a boy to learn the 
trade." Mr. Bliss, on turning about, was 
greatly astonished at the uncouth creature be- 
fore him. His clothes did not seem to belong- 
to him at all, but rather to hang on him as 
they sometimes do on a scarecrow. He was 
slim-bodied, while his head was large enough 
for the biggest man. "Do you want to learn 
to print ?" The Yankee reply was, "I have had 
some notion of it." When he asked the boy 
what he had read he replied that he had read 
"a little of 'most everything." As he proceeded 
to question him the publisher became more 
and more amazed at what this strange, large- 
headed boy knew. And withal there was such 
a straightforward common sense about him 
that he completely won the older man's respect 
and regard. 

Horace's wish was granted, and he was 
bound out till he was twenty years of age. 
The first six months he had only his board, 
and thereafter forty dollars a year in addition. 
He seemed to take to typesetting by intuition. 



218 Youth of Famous Americans 

as he had to spelling, and before the end of 
the first day could do better and quicker work 
than many an ajiprentice of several weeks' 
standing. The years that he passed here took 
the place of a college for Horace Greeley. It 
proved a capital place for an apprentice who 
was willing to work hard, and who had a de- 
sire to learn every branch of the printer's 
business. The company was a financial fail- 
ure, the editor left, the management was loose, 
the force in the printing department was very 
small, and each one was at liberty to do what- 
ever he wished, even to the writing of original 
paragraphs and news items. He was kindly 
treated, and received increased pay, but he 
could scarcely recall a day in which they were 
not hurried in their work. He had no time 
for even a day's fishing or hunting, nor for a 
game of ball; but he always found time for 
reading. There were plenty of books at his 
disposal in Poultney, besides a circulating 
library. He records that he never afterward 
found books and the opportunity to enjoy 
them so ample, and he thinks that he never 
before or after read to so much profit. 

He took a great interest and a leading part 
in the debating society of the town. He soon 
became the acknowledged leader of the whole 
community as a debater. He was always ready 
with the part assigned him, and never lost his 
self-confidence in encountering any audience 



Horace Greeley 219 

or antagonist. He took the debates very seri- 
ously, and contended with all his might. His 
retentive and exact memory gave him a great 
advantage as a debater. He came to be re- 
garded as an authority on all vexed ques- 
tions, and, though only a stripling, was always 
listened to with the deference paid only to men 
of marked ability. He never lost his temper 
nor got the ill will of those whom he floored 
in debate, or whose statements, quotations, or 
omissions he corrected. His manner was awk- 
ward in the extreme, but he was fluent and in- 
teresting always. When he was only sixteen 
years old he was just the same sort of a 
speaker that he was when he was the most 
famous editor and lecturer in the land. One 
of the men who had debated with him in the 
old days says that when he came back there to 
lecture, "I thought I saw before me the Horace 
Greeley of the old Poultney 'Forum,' as we 
called it." His outward appearance, though 
very uncouth still, must have changed for the 
better, inasmuch as he never made any prep- 
aration for the lyceum other than putting a 
jacket over his open shirt. 

The Northern Spectator found its sunset 
before Horace Greeley had reached his twen- 
tieth year, and the lad went forth to varied 
hardships and struggles and fortunes, until he 
founded the New Yorh Tribune and became 
the leading editor of the New World. 




JULIA WARD HOWE 



JULIA WARD HOWE 

When Julia Ward Howe was four years old 
she went with her parents on a journey up 
the Hudson River to Albany and on to Niag'- 
ara. The sight of Niagara caused her much 
surprise. Playing on the piazza of the hotel, 
one day, with her mother's doctor for a com- 
panion, she ventured to ask him, "Who made 
that great hole where the water comes 
down?" He replied, "The great Maker of all." 
"Who is that?" she innocently inquired; and 
he said, "Do you not know our Father who 
art in heaven?" The little girl felt she ought 
to have known, and went away somewhat 
abashed. 

On another day during the visit to Niagara 
her mother told her they were going to visit 
Red Jacket, a great Indian chief, and that 
she must be very polite to him. The mother 
gave her a twist of tobacco tied with a blue 
ribbon, which she was to present to him, and 
bade her observe the silver medal which she 
should see hung on his neck, and which, she 
said, had been given to him by General Wash- 
ington. They drove to the Indian encamp- 
ment, and a tall figure advanced to the car- 
riage. As its door was opened the little girl, 



224 Youth of Famous Americans 

determining to do lier part well, sprang for- 
ward, and clasped her arms around the neck 
of the noble savage, and was much astonished 
at his cool reception of such a greeting. Julia 
was greatly surprised and grieved afterward 
to learn that she had not done exactly the 
right thing. 

A year later her mother died, and her aunt, 
a sister of her mother, came to take care of 
the children. This aunt had long been a care- 
taker in her mother's household, where she 
had much to do with bringing up her younger 
sisters and brothers. Julia's mother had been 
accustomed to borrow her from time to time, 
and the aunt had threatened to hang out a 
sign over the door with the inscription, 
"Cheering done here by the job by E. Cutler." 

Julia's father was very careful in the choice 
of the associates of his children, and intended 
that they should receive their education at 
home. But finally, after some experience wdth 
governesses and masters, Julia was sent to 
school in the near neighborhood of their house. 
She was nine years old at this time, precocious 
for her age, and endowed with a good memory. 
This fact led to her being placed in a class of 
girls much older than herself, specially occu- 
pied with the study of Paley's Moral Philos- 
ophy. The little girl managed to commit 
many pages of this book to memory, although 
she was much more interested in the study of 



Julia Ward Howe 225 

clieniistry. The study of lauguagcs was very 
congenial to her; she had been accustomed to 
speak French from her earliest years. To this 
she soon added Latin, and a little later Italian 
and German. 

Julia Ward had great natural gifts for 
music, and her musical education was the best 
that the time could afford. She had her first 
lessons from a very irritable French artist, of 
whom she stood in such fear that she could 
remember nothing that he taught her. A sec- 
ond teacher, Mr. Boocock, had more patience, 
and soon brought her forward in her studies. 
He had been a pupil of Cramer, and his taste 
had been formed by hearing the best music in 
London. He gave Julia lessons for many 
years, and she learned from him to appreciate 
the works of the great composers, Beethoven, 
Handel, and Mozart. 

Julia's father, Samuel Ward, was a rich 
banker, and the family home was always one 
of wealth and culture. It was also the home 
of a number of relatives. One of the interest- 
ing characters of this family group who re- 
sided in her father's house during all her girl- 
hood years was one of the great ^N'ew York 
worthies of the time. Dr. John Wakefield 
Francis, her uncle by marriage. Her own de- 
scription of him in her reminiscences is very 
picturesque. She writes : 

"He was of German origin, florid in com- 
L5 



226 Youth of Famous Americans 

plexion and mercurial in temperament. His 
fine head was crowned with an abundance of 
silken, curly hair. He always wore gold-bowed 
glasses, being very nearsighted, was a born 
humorist, and delighted in jests and hyiDerbole. 
He was an omnivorous reader, and so con- 
stituted that four hours of sleep nightly suf- 
ficed to keep him in health. This was fortu- 
nate for him, as he had an extensive practice, 
and was liable to be called out at all hours of 
the night. A candle always stood on a table 
beside his pillow, and with it a pile of books 
and papers which he habitually perused long 
before the coming of daylight. It so happened, 
however, that he awaked one morning at about 
four of the clock, and saw his wife, wrapped 
in shawls, sitting near the fire reading some- 
thing by candlelight. The following conver- 
sation ensued : 

" 'Eliza, what book is that you are reading V 

" 'Uncle Tom's Cabin, dear.' 

'^ ^Is it ? I don't need to know anything 
more about it — it must be the greatest book of 
the age.' 

"His humor was extravagant. I once heard 
him exclaim, ^How brilliant is the light which 
streams through the fissures of a cracked 
brain!' Again he spoke of 'A fellow who 
couldn't go straight in a ropewalk.' His anec- 
dotes of things encountered in the exercise of 
,his profession were most amusing." 



Julia Ward Howe 227 

Julia's Aunt Francis sometimes invited 
friends for an evening party, but made it a 
point to invite those who were not her favor- 
ites for a separate occasion, not wishing to 
dilute her enjoyment of the chosen few, and, 
on the other hand, desiring not to hurt the 
feelings of any of her acquaintance by wholly 
leaving them out. Julia Ward Howe remem- 
bers a very interesting incident in relation to 
these parties in which the poet Edgar Allan 
Poe figured. That brilliant but erratic liter- 
ary star had just become known in New York, 
and Dr. Francis had invited him to the house. 
It was on one of his wife's good evenings, and 
her rooms were filled with company. The poet 
arrived just at a moment when the doctor was 
obliged to answer the call of a patient. He 
accordingly opened the parlor door and pushed 
Mr. Poe into the room, saying, "Eliza, my 
dear, the Raven!" after which he immediately 
withdrew. "The Raven" was very new then, 
and it happened that Mrs. Francis had never 
heard of the poem, and was entirely at a 
loss to understand this introduction of the 
newcomer. 

Julia Ward left school at the age of six- 
teen, and began thereafter to study in good 
earnest. Until that time a certain over- 
romantic and imaginative turn of mind had 
interfered much with the progress of her 
studies. She indulged in daydreams, which 



228 Youth of Famous Americans 

appeared to her far higher in tone than the 
humdrum of her school recitations. When 
these were at an end she began to feel the 
necessity of more strenuous application, and 
at once arranged for herself hours of study 
relieved by the practice of vocal and instru- 
mental music. 

About this time her eldest brother, Samuel 
Ward, Jr., came home from Europe, where he 
had been studying and traveling. The young 
man brought with him a fine librarj^ and 
Julia's father, having already added to his 
large house a spacious art gallery purposely 
for the cultivation of the minds of his chil- 
dren in art, now built a study whose walls 
were entirely occupied by the brother's books. 
Julia had free access to these, and did not 
neglect to profit by it. 

Samuel Ward, the father, was a man of fine 
tastes, inclined to generous and even lavish 
expenditure. He desired to give to his chil- 
dren the best educational opportunities, the 
best and most expensive masters. He filled 
his art gallery with the finest pictures that 
money could command in the New York of 
that day. He gave largely to public undertak- 
ings, was one of the founders of the New York 
University, and was one of the foremost pro- 
moters of church building in the then distant 
West. He never demurred at expense where 
his children were concerned, except where it 



Julia Ward Howe 229 

was connected with dress and fashionable en- 
tertainment. Julia's elder brother had many 
arguments with his father on what he thought 
was an entirely wrong estimate of the value 
of socitil intercourse. On one occasion the 
dispute between them became quite animated. 

"Sir," said the son, "you do not keep in view 
the importance of the social tie." 

"The social what?" asked the father. 

"The social tie, sir." 

"I make small account of that," said the 
elder gentleman. 

"I will die in defense of it !" impetuously 
rejoined the younger. 

The father was so much amused at this sally 
that he spoke of it later to a friend : "He will 
die in defense of the social tie, indeed!" 

The critical hour in Julia Ward's life came 
in 1841, when she was spending the summer 
with her sisters in a cottage near Boston. 
Longfellow and Sumner, who were friends of 
the family, often visited them. Charles Sum- 
ner once made mention of Dr. Samuel Grid- 
ley Howe's wonderful achievement in the case 
of Laura Bridgman, the first blind deaf-mute 
who had ever been taught the use of language. 
One day the two men, Longfellow and Sum- 
ner, drove over with them to Perkins Institu- 
tion for the blind. They found Laura, then a 
child of ten years, seated at her little desk. 
Dr. Howe was absent when they arrived at the 



230 Youth of Famous Americans 

institution, but before they took leave of it 
Mr. Sumner, looking out of a window, said, 
"O, here comes Howe on his black horse!" 
Julia Ward looked out at the window, and 
saw at once her fate and her career. 



i' 






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HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



HENRY WADSWORTH 
LONGFELLOW 

Longfellow, the poet, was born in Port- 
land, Me., in 1807. His father was at that 
time a young man of well-trained and well- 
balanced mind, was counted a thoroughly good 
lawyer, and was a man highly regarded by a 
large circle of the best people. His mother 
was a gentle-tempered, graceful woman of like 
character as her husband. Mrs. Longfellow 
was the daughter of General Wads worth, and 
when the future poet was born, and when she 
came to give him a name, her heart went out 
tenderly toward her gallant brother, Lieutenant 
Henry Wadsworth, who, before Tripoli, surren- 
dered his life while bravely serving his country. 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in 
a house which is still standing on a street 
of Portland, Me., and which is well known to 
every attendant at the public schools in that 
city. The, story is told how some years since 
a teacher in one of the public schools, after 
giving many lessons on Longfellow's beautiful 
life, asked her pupils if any of them knew 
where the poet was born. Adittle hand went 
up in a hurry, and a small voice piped forth, 
'Tn Patsey Connor's bedroom" — Patsey Con- 



234 Youth of Famous Americans 

nor being at that time one of the occupants of 
the old Longfellow house. 

Not far from the home of the Longfellows, 
in Spring Street, there stood a small brick 
schoolhouse, presided over by Ma'am Fellows, 
a most exemplary lady who had taught school 
for many years and had grown gray in the 
practice of rigid discipline. She was a firm 
believer in the idea that "one should never 
smile in school hours," and she exercised her 
views on this topic very much to the terror of 
the young striplings who were placed under 
her charge. "My recollections of my first 
teacher," said the poet after the lapse of three- 
score and ten years, "are not vivid; but I re- 
call that she was bent on giving me a right 
start in life; that she thought that even very 
young children should be made to know the 
difference between right and wrong; and that 
severity of manner was more practical than 
gentleness of persuasion. She inspired me 
with one trait — that is, a genuine respect for 
my elders." 

For some reason — it is forgotten what — the 
boy did not remain a pupil of Ma'am Fellows ; 
and after the first vacation he was sent by his 
parents to the town school on Love Lane, where 
he remained just- two weeks. He was then 
placed in a private school, presided over by 
Nathaniel H. Carter, and continued to be a 
pupil at this school until Mr. Carter became 



Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 235 

an instructor in the Portland Academy, at 
which time he attracted many of his old 
pupils, including Henry Wadsworth, to his 
new field of labor. 

A little later Longfellow came, in this acad- 
emy, under the strong and beneficent influence 
of Professor Bezaleel Cushman, a man of bril- 
liant parts and just the sort of man to arouse 
an ambition for learning in a young boy. 

Under such an inspiring teacher Henry 
Longfellow's progress was rapid, and in 1821 
he was able to enroll his name as a freshman 
in Bowdoin College. He was then in the four- 
teenth year of his age; and the fact of his 
•being ready at such an age for college, though 
not unprecedented, was early, even for that 
time, when colleges were less exacting and 
boys more precocious than now. 

Already the boy had given evidences that 
led others to the expectation that his would 
be a literary career. While yet in his ninth 
year, he w^rote his first verses. There is a tra- 
dition that his teacher wanted him to write a 
composition, a task from which the boy very 
naturally shrank. 

"You can write words, can you not?" asked 
the teacher. 

"Yes," was the response. 

"Then you can put words together?" 

"Yes, sir." 

"Then," said the teacher, "you may take 



236 Youth of Famous Americans 

your slate and go out Ix'hind the schoolhouse, 
and there you can tiiid something to write 
about; and then you can tell what it is, what 
it is for, and what is to be done with it; and 
that will be a composition." 

Henry took his slate and went out. He went 
behind Mr. Finney's barn, which chanced to 
be near; and, seeing a fine turnip growing up, 
he thought he knew what that was, what it was 
for, and what would be done with it. 

A half hour had been allowed the boy for his 
first undertaking in writing compositions. 
Within the prescribed time he carried in his 
work, all accomplished, and surprised his 
teacher with a poem. This poem is not in 
existence, though a poem purporting to be this 
has often been published. 

When young Longfellow was barely thirteen 
years of age, and still a pupil at the Portland 
Academy, he composed a bolder effort, which 
is still preserved in manuscript, entitled 
"Venice, an Italian Song." The manuscript 
is dated, "Portland Academy, March 17, 1820," 
and is signed with the full name of the author. 

The first published poem of Longfellow's 
was on "LovewelFs Fight." It was composed 
while he was attending the academy, just after 
he had been reading an account of the French 
and Indian war. Having written it to his 
taste, and copied it neatly on a fresh sheet of 
paper, it suddenly occurred to him that it was 



Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 237 

worthy of being printed. The young author 
had never yet seen aught of his compositions 
in tyi3e, and, unlike many young writers of 
later day, he was extremely shy about making 
a beginning. But the persuasion of one of his 
schoolfellows overcame his modesty; and so, 
late on a certain evening, he mustered up cour- 
age to go and drop the manuscript into the 
editorial box of one of the two weekly news- 
papers then published in the town. He waited 
patiently for the next issue of the paper, and 
was not a little chagrined to find when it 
appeared that the poem was left out. Several 
weeks went by, and still the poem remained 
unpublished. In a fit of disgust the young 
author, yet only a lad of thirteen years, re- 
paired to the editorial sanctum and demanded 
the return of the insulted manuscript. The 
request was granted, and Longfellow then car- 
ried it to the editor of the rival newspaper, 
the Portland Gazette, by whom it was at once 
accepted and published. From that day the 
young poet was at liberty to print in the 
columns of that journal whatever he might 
happen to write; nor did he permit the oppor- 
tunity to slip by unimproved. 

Longfellow himself, in his prose romance 
called Fanshawe, has given us a pretty picture 
of the opening of his college life. He says : 

"From the exterior of the collegians an ac- 
curate observer might pretty safely judge how 



238 Youth of Famous Americans 

long they had been inmates of those classic 
walls. The brown cheeks and the rustic dress 
of some would inform him that they had but 
recently left the plow to labor in a not less 
toilsome field. The grave look, and the inter- 
mingling of garments of a more classic cut, 
would distinguish those who had begun to 
acquire the polish of their new residence; and 
the air of superiority, the paler cheek, the less 
robust form, the spectacles of green, and the 
dress in general of threadbare black would 
designate the highest class, who were under- 
stood to have acquired nearly all the science 
their alma mater could bestow, and to be on 
the point of assuming their stations in the 
world. There were, it is true, exceptions to 
this general description. A few young men 
had found their way hither from the distant 
seaports ; and these were the models of fashion 
to their rustic companions, over whom they 
asserted a superiority in exterior accomplish- 
ments which the fresh though unpolished in- 
tellect of the sons of the forest denied them in 
their literary competitions. A third class, 
differing widely from both the former, con- 
sisted of a few young descendants of the 
aborigines, to whom an impracticable philan- 
thropy was endeavoring to impart the benefits 
of civilization. 

"If this institution did not offer all the ad- 
vantages of elder and prouder seminaries, its 



Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 239 

deficiencies were compensated to its students 
by the inculcation of regular habits, and of a 
deep and awful sense of religion, which seldom 
deserted them in their course through life. 
The mild and gentle rule was more destructive 
to vice than a sterner sway ; and, though youth 
is never without its follies, they have seldom 
been more harmless than they were here. The 
students, indeed, ignorant of their own bliss, 
sometimes wished to hasten the time of their 
entrance on the business of life; but they 
found, in after years, that many of their hap- 
piest remembrances, many of the scenes which 
they would with least reluctance live over 
again, referred to the seat of their early 
studies." 

In Bowdoin College Longfellow came under 
the touch of at least one man who was a great 
genius in imparting knowledge; this was Pro- 
fessor Parker Cleaveland, who was the glory of 
Bowdoin for more than half a century. It is 
of this "grand old teacher" that Longfellow 
speaks in a sonnet written during his visit to 
Brunswick in the summer of 1875 : 

"Among the many lives that I have known, 
None I remember more serene and sweet. 
More rounded in itself and more complete. 

Than his who lies beneath this funeral stone. 

These pines, that murmur in low monotone. 
These walks frequented by scholastic feet, 
Were all his world ; but in this calm retreat 

For him the teacher's chair became a throne. 



240 Youth of Famous Americans 

With foud affection memory loves to dwell 
On the old days, when his example made 
A pastime of the toil of tongue and pen ; 
And now, amid the groves he loved so well 

That naught could lure him from their grateful 

shade, 
He sleeps, but wakes elsewhere, for God hath said, 
'Amen I' '' 

At the time of his graduation Longfellow 
was nineteen years of age. So full of promise 
was his future that, only a few months after 
his graduation, he was chosen to fill the chair 
of modern languages and literature in his 
alma mater. So it was his manhood begun 
before his youth had scarcely ended. 



W^fTWj^m^^m 



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u 







JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

The g'reat Quaker poet, Wliittier, was a 
farm boy. The family were not considered 
poor farmers in those days, though it would 
seem poor enough now. Their farm, which 
was bought for six hundred dollars borrowed 
money, yielded nearly every article of food 
consumed, as well as the flax and wool spun 
and woven by the diligent mother into cloth 
for their homemade clothes. We may be sure 
there were no luxuries. There were no ulsters 
in those days, and warm flannels were little 
known and almost unworn, so that the poet 
in later years declared that in boyhood he 
often sufl^ered bitterly from the cold, especially 
in those long drives to the Friends' meeting- 
house, eight miles away in Amesbury. 

-And yet the family life of the Whittiers, 
plain and simj^le as it was from necessity, was 
made charming and delightful, notwithstand- 
ing the hard work, by the perpetual cheerful- 
ness, humor, and wit, and calm and trustful 
piety, of all the members of the household 
flock. Everyone who entered the home went 
away to bear testimony to the good cheer of 
the Whittier atmosphere. 

The reading matter of the farmhouse group 



244 Youth of Famous Americans 

consisted of a few religious books, the almanac, 
and a local weekly newspaper. In Whittier's 
boyhood the whipping post and stocks were 
still to be seen at Newburyport, and he was 
one day shown in Salem the tree on which the 
witches were hanged. People were mostly 
their own doctors at that day in New England. 
If a tooth was to be pulled you must go either 
to a physician or to a horse doctor, as the days 
of dentistry had not yet arrived. A story is 
told of one horse doctor of the time who, when 
the trembling victim, seated in a chair, was 
ruefully eyeing his rude instruments of tor- 
ture, always used to say consolingly, "Don't 
ye be scared now; if I break your jah I'll give 
ye my oxen!" 

Whittier first attended the district school 
when he was a lad of seven years. The school- 
house was warmed by a fireplace, the wood for 
which was split and piled up and brought in 
by the boys as needed. There were no writing 
books, but a strong coarse paper, foolscap size, 
was used, either in single sheets or the sheets 
stitched together. Lead pencils were un- 
known ; a chunky, plummet of lead was used 
instead, and it was usually made at home, and 
cut into various shapes to suit the owner's 
taste. Whittier's first schoolmaster was Joshua 
Coffin, who was teaching that winter in a 
])rivate house, as the schoolhouse was under- 
going repairs. This explains a mysterious pas- 



John Greenleaf Whittier 245 

sage ill tlie poem, ^'To My Old Schoolniaster," 
ill which we read of the sound of the cradle- 
rock and squall coming through the cracked 
and crazy wall, and "the good man's voice at 
strife with his shrill and tipsy wife." 

In succeeding winters John and his brother 
learned their lessons in the brown schoolhouse 
that stood a half mile from home but has long 
ago disappeared. No poet has made more of 
his school days, as literary material, than 
Whittier. Such poems as "In School Days," 
''My Playmate," "Snowbound," "The Barefoot 
Boy," and the poem already referred to, "To 
My Old Schoolmaster," are all largely drawn 
from the poet's happy memories of the little 
brown schoolhouse. 

Whittier began to write poems very early. 
The poems of Burns furnished the brand 
which first caused the poetic flame to flash up 
in his own soul. When young Whittier was 
about sixteen years old William Lloyd Garri- 
son was printing the Free Press in Newbury- 
port. , Garrison himself was very young, and 
he is described as being at that time a neatly 
dressed youth, popular with young ladies ; hav- 
ing rich dark-brown hair, forehead high and 
very white, cheeks ruddy, lips full and sensi- 
tive, wide hazel eyes, active movements, and a 
bright and happy disposition. 

The young poet's father had subscribed for 
Garrison's Free Press, and was much pleased 



246 Youth of Famous Americans 

with its humanitarian tone. John Groenleaf s 
elder sister, Mary, had, unknown to him, sent 
to the Free Press, by the postman, in 1826, a 
poem of her brother's. 

One day, as the boy was mending a stone 
fence by the road, the postman threw him the 
family copy of the Free Press, and he was 
dumfounded to find his own production in the 
poet's corner. That was the beginning of his 
fame, and of his friendship with Garrison. 
William Lloyd Garrison tells the story himself 
in a very interesting way. He says : 

"Going up stairs to my office one day, I ob- 
served a letter lying near the door, to my ad- 
dress; which, on opening, I found to contain 
an original piece of poetry for my paper, the 
Free Press. The ink was very pale, the hand- 
writing very small; and having at that time 
a horror of newspaper 'original poetry' — which 
was rather increased than diminished with the 
lapse of time — ^my first impulse was to tear it 
in pieces without reading it, the chances of re- 
jection after its perusal being as ninety-nine to 
one. . . . But, summoning resolution to read 
it, I was equally surprised and gratified to find 
it above mediocrity, and so gave it a place in 
my journal. . . . As I* was anxious to find out 
the writer, my postrider one day divulged the 
secret, stating that he had dropped the letter 
in the manner described, and that it was writ- 
ten by a Quaker lad named Whittier, who was 



John Greenleaf Whittier 247 

daily at work on the shoemaker's bench with 
hammer and hipstone at East Haverhilh 
Jumping- into a vehicle, I lost no time in driv- 
ing with a friend to see the youthful rustic 
bard, who came into the room with shrinking 
dithdence, almost unable to speak, and blush- 
ing like a maiden. Giving some words of 
encouragement, I addressed myself more par- 
ticularly to his parents, and urged them with 
great earnestness to grant him every possible 
facility for the development of his remarkable 
genius." 

On another occasion Mr. Garrison wrote : "I 
found him a bashful boy covered with blushes, 
from whom scarcely a word could be ex- 
tracted." 

It happened that on the occasion of Garri- 
son's call yOung Whittier had been at work in 
the field, and, on being called, he had come up 
to the back door, and got on his coat and shoes 
— for he had been working barefooted in the 
field — and exchanged a few words with his 
callers, when his father appeared on the scene. 

"Is this Friend Whittier f inquired Garri- 
son. 

"Yes." 

"We want to see you about your son." 

"Why, what has the boy been doing T' in- 
quired the father, anxiously. 

On learning that the boy's crime was noth- 
ing worse than scribbling poetry his alarm 



248 Youth of Famous Americans 

was quieted. He informed Mr. Garrison that 
the boy began writing verse almost as soon 
as he could write at all, and when pen and ink 
failed him he would resort to chalk and char- 
coal — but all with so much secrecy that it was 
only by removing some rubbish in the garret 
that his concealed manuscripts had been 
brought to light. ' When Garrison urged the 
father to give him an educr.tion, and allow 
hira to follow his guiding star, the father an- 
swered with deep emotion, "Sir, poetry will 
not give him bread," and begged him not to 
put such notions into his son's head. 

The visit of the young editor had a marvel- 
ous effect on the mind of the budding poet. It 
sowed the seed of a noble ambition in his soul. 
Every day he grew more determined to get a 
better education. It seemed utterly out of the 
question for his father to afford for him a 
single term's schooling away from home. But 
"where there is a will there is a way," and 
John Greenleaf Whittier had a will. It hap- 
pened that the young man who helped on the 
farm in summer was accustomed to make 
ladies' shoes and slippers during the winter, 
and he agreed to instruct Whittier in the art 
of shoemaking, and thus enable him to get 
money for a term of schooling at Haverhill 
Academy. 

Whittier entered that academy in April, 
1827, and remained six months, returning 



John Greenleaf Whittier 249 

home every Friday evening. The master of 
the school could with difficulty be made to 
believe that the first composition handed in by 
Whittier had been written by him without as- 
sistance. But the matter was soon put beyond 
question by the production of many more of 
still greater merit. He did not indulge in a 
single luxury this first winter; for at the end 
of the half year he still had the Mexican quar- 
ter of a dollar which remained as surplus after 
he had carefully calculated and apportioned 
his expenses. 

Friends of the academy days describe Whit- 
tier as a silent, thinking boy, neatly dressed, 
rather lionized at school, especially by the 
girls; one whom you would turn to look at a 
second time on the street. At the Wednesday 
afternoon meetings of the scholars for social 
and literary entertainment he was usually 
present, and entered into the spirit of the hour 
with zest, freed for the time being from the 
bashful reserve which usually characterized 
him in public. 




ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

When Abraham Lincoln was in his tenth 
year his noble mother, Nancy Lincoln, to 
whom he owed more than to all others on earth 
his splendid future career, fell asleep in death 
in the little log cabin in the forest in Indiana. 
So good a woman was this mother of Lincoln 
that when this ten-year-old boy wrote a letter 
to the Methodist circuit rider and told him 
about the death of his mother that good man, 
Rev. Mr. Elkin, rode a hundred miles on 
horseback, through the wilderness, to pay his 
tribute of respect and honor to her memory. 
Dr. J. G. Holland has given an interesting 
picture of that most striking event in the life 
of young Lincoln. It was a bright Sabbath 
morning the settlers of the region started for 
the cabin of the Lincolns, and as they gathered 
in they presented a picture worthy of the 
pencil of the worthiest painter. Some came 
in carts of the rudest construction, their 
wheels consisting of sections of the huge 
boles of forest trees, and every other member 
the produce of the ax and auger; some came 
on horseback, two or three upon a horse; 
others came in wagons drawn by oxen, and 
still others came on foot. Two hundred per- 
sons in all were assembled when Parson Elkin 



254 Youth of Famous Americans 

came out from the Lincoln cabin, accompanied 
by the little family, and proceeded to the tree 
under which the precious dust of the wife and 
mother was buried. And there under the great 
tree the circuit rider paid his warm tribute of 
praise to the Christian woman who had laid 
her hand with such divine influence on the 
early years of Abraham Lincoln. It was a 
picture which never faded from the mind 
and heart of Lincoln, and to his dying day 
he recalled it again and again with loving 
remembrance. 

Abraham Lincoln's education was mostly 
secured by books he was able to borrow in the 
settlements, and which he read until they were 
a part of his very self. He read the Bible 
until he had committed much of it to heart. 
He read Aesop's Fables until he had ab- 
sorbed every one, and when we remember 
his marvelous gift as a story-teller in later 
years we must believe that he swallowed 
the spirit as well as the letter. Pilgrim's 
Progress, Weems's Life of Washington, and a 
Life of Henry Clay which his mother had 
managed to purchase for him were also among 
his earliest favorites. A little later he read 
the Life of FranMin and Ramsey's Life of 
Washington. These books were not only bread 
and meat for this young mind, but they in- 
spired in him ideals of living toward which he 
strove throughout his entire career. 



Abraham Lincoln 255 

The days of Lincohi's years following the 
death of his mother were full of work. He 
was stalwart, full of muscular strength, and 
a good hand everywhere. His helpful spirit 
began to show itself early. One evening, w^iile 
returning from a "house raising" in the neigh- 
borhood, with a number of companions, he 
discovered a straying horse with saddle and 
bridle on him. The horse was recognized as 
belonging to a man who was accustomed to 
excess in drink, and it was suspected at once 
that the owner was not far off. A short search 
only was necessary to confirm the suspicions 
of the young men. The poor drunkard was 
found in a perfectly helpless condition upon 
the chilly ground. Abraham's companions 
urged the cowardly policy of leaving him to 
his fate, but young Lincoln would not hear to 
the proposition. At his request the miserable 
sot was lifted to his shoulders, and he actually 
carried him eighty rods to the nearest house. 
Sending word to his father that he should not 
be back that night, with the reason for his 
absence, he attended and nursed the man until 
the morning, and had the pleasure of believing 
that he had saved his life. 

The poverty of the conditions which sur- 
rounded the future President of the United 
States and one of the world's immortal char- 
acters is plainly suggested by an incident 
which Mr. Lincoln related during the civil war 



256 Youth of Famous Americans 

to his Secretary of State, Mr. Seward. Lin- 
coln was eighteen years old, and had built a 
little boat to take the farm produce down the 
river to market. As he stood at the landing 
one day a steamer approached, coming down 
the river. At the same time two passengers 
came to the river's bank, who wished to be 
taken out to the steamer with their luggage. 
Looking among the boats at the landing, they 
singled out Abraham's, and asked him to row 
them to the steamer. This he did, and after 
seeing them and their trunks on board he had 
the pleasure of receiving upon the bottom of 
his boat, before he shoved off, a silver half 
dollar from each of his passengers. "I could 
scarcely believe my eyes," said Mr. Lincoln, in 
telling the story. "You may think it was a 
very little thing," continued he, "but it was 
a most important incident in my life. I could 
scarcely believe that I, a poor boy, had earned 
a dollar in less than a day. The world seemed 
wider and fairer before me. I was a more 
hopeful and confident being from that time." 
At the age of nineteen Lincoln hired out to 
a neighbor to take charge of a flatboat and its 
cargo, and, in company with the neighbor's 
son, to take it to the sugar plantations near 
New Orleans. The entire business of the trip 
was placed in Abraham's hands. This fact 
alone vouches for the young man's reputation 
among the people where he lived as a young 



Abraham Lincoln 257 

fellow of force and honesty. He had never 
made the trip, knew nothing of the journey, 
was unaccustomed to business transactions, 
had never been much upon the river; but his 
tact, ability, and honesty were so far trusted 
that his neighbor, who knew him well, was 
willing to risk his cargo and his son in his 
care. 

It was a great day for young Lincoln when 
he turned his clumsy craft loose from the 
shore and started on a ride of eighteen hun- 
dred miles Math an opportunity to see more of 
the world than, up to this time, he had 
dreamed of beholding. Though only nineteen 
years of age, he was a tall and powerful man 
in appearance. He had reached the unusual 
height of six feet and four inches, and was a 
marked man for physical strength, even among 
the tall and hardy pioneers of the backwoods. 

The journey to New Orleans was not with- 
out some exciting events. Arriving at a sugar 
plantation somewhere below Natchez, the boat 
was pulled in and tied to the shore for the pur- 
poses of trade; and here an incident occurred 
that threatened for the moment to be serious. 
Soon after night had fallen young Lincoln 
and his fellow-voyager had lain down upon 
their hard bed to sleep. Hearing a noise on 
shore, Abraham shouted, "Who's there?" The 
noise continuing, and no voice replying, he 
sprang to his feet, and saw seven negroes, evi- 
17 



258 Youth of Famous Americans 

dently bent on plunder. He guessed their 
errand at once, and seizing a handspike rushed 
toward them, and knocked one into the water 
the moment that he touched the boat. The 
second, third, and fourth who leaped on board 
were served in the same rough way. Seeing 
that they were not likely to make headway in 
their thieving enterprise, the remainder turned 
to flee. Abraham and his companion, growing 
excited and warm with their work, leaped on 
shore, and followed them. Both were too swift 
of foot for the negroes, and all of them re- 
ceived a severe pounding. They returned to 
their boat just as the others escaped from the 
water, but the latter fled into the darkness as 
fast as their feet could carry them. Abraham 
and his fellow in the fight were both injured, 
but not disabled. Not being armed, and un- 
willing to wait until the negroes had received 
reinforcements, they cut adrift, and floated 
down a mile or two, tied up to the bank again, 
and watched and waited for the morning. 

He had still another experience w^ith the 
negroes while in New Orleans which made a 
lasting impression on his mind and had much 
to do with his future career. It was in New 
Orleans he first came into actual contact with 
the worst features of slavery. For the first 
time he entered a slave market and saw human 
beings put up at auction and sold like cattle. 
He stood by, transfixed with horror, and saw 



Abraham Lincoln 259 

families separated, and the hopeless sorrow of 
father and mother as the children were torn 
from their arms to be led away to be slaves in 
some distant and to them unknown land. He 
saw the whipping post, with all its attendant 
horrors, and heard the stinging blows of the 
lash and the groans of the poor victims. As 
Abraham Lincoln turned away from these ter- 
rible scenes, he turned to his neighbor with his 
face all aflame with passion, and said through 
his set teeth : 

"If I ever get a chance to hit that institu- 
tion I will hit it hard, John !" 

The neighbor who had employed Lincoln to 
make the trip to New Orleans was so well 
pleased with him that on his return he asked 
him to take charge of a country store which he 
owned at New Salem. Many are the stories 
which are told of his experiences in that store. 
On one occasion he sold a woman a little bill 
of goods, amounting in value, by the reckon- 
ing, to two dollars and six and a' quarter cents. 
He received the money and the woman went 
away. On adding the items of the bill again, 
to make himself sure of correctness, he found 
that he had six and a quarter cents too much. 
It was night, and, closing and locking the 
store, he started out on foot, a distance of two 
or three miles, for the house of his defrauded 
customer, and, delivering over to her the sum 
whose possession had so much troubled him. 



260 Youth of Famous Americans 

went home satisfied. No wonder he came to be 
known as "Honest Abe." 

It was a rude region, but even among his 
coarse pioneer experiences Lincohi showed in 
his youth the fine grain of the man of honor 
that was being builded in him. 

One day he was showing goods to some 
women, when a bully came in and began to 
talk in an offensive manner, using much pro- 
fanity, and evidently wishing to provoke a 
quarrel. Lincoln leaped over the counter, 
and begged him, as ladies were present, not 
to indulge in such talk. The bully retorted 
that the opportunity had come for which he 
had long sought, and he would like to see the 
man who could hinder him from saying any- 
thing he might choose to say. Lincoln, still 
cool, told him that if he would wait until the 
ladies retired he would hear what he had to 
say and give him any satisfaction he desired. 
As soon as the women were gone the man be- 
came furious. Lincoln heard his boasts and 
his abuse for a time, and, finding that he was 
not to be put off without a fight, said, "Well, if 
you must be whipped I suppose I may as well 
whip you as any other man." This was just 
what the bully had been seeking, he said, so 
out of doors they went, and Lincoln made 
short work with him. He threw him upon the 
ground, held him there as if he had been a 
child, and gathering Some smartweed which 



Abraham Lincoln 261 

grew upon the spot rubbed it into his face and 
eyes until the fellow bellowed with pain. Lin- 
coln did all this without a particle of anger, 
and when the job was finished went immedi- 
ately for water, washed his victim's face, and 
did everything he could to alleviate his dis- 
tress. The upshot of the matter was that the 
man became his fast and lifelong friend, and 
was a better man from that day. It was im- 
possible then, and it always remained impos- 
sible, for Lincoln to cherish resentment or 
revenge. 







ULYSSES S. GRANT 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 

Ulysses S. Grant, the great general of the 
civil war, and twice President of the United 
States, spent the first seventeen years of his 
life in Claremont County, Ohio, where he was 
born on the 27th of April, 1822. This was 
before the days of free schools in Ohio, and 
such schools as there were were supported by 
subscription. They were unclassified schools, 
in which the infant learning the A B C's and 
the young man or the young woman, full- 
grown, sat side by side. Such early education 
as young Grant received was mostly in a vil- 
lage school of this sort. He was not a par- 
ticularly studious boy, and though his father 
sent him away one winter to Maysville, Ky., 
and another to Kipley, O., he says in his 
Memoirs that he doubts if he made progress 
enough to compensate for the outlay for board 
and tuition. Both winters were spent going 
over the same old arithmetic which he knew 
every word of before, and repeating, "A noun 
is the name of a thing," which he had heard 
repeated by such a variety of teachers that he 
had at last come to believe it. 

The future general's father was in very 
comfortable circumstances, considering the 



266 Youth of Famous Americans 

times, his place of residence, and the com- 
munity in which he lived. Mindful of his 
own lack of facilities for acquiring an educa- 
tion, his greatest desire in maturer years was 
for the education of his children. Conse- 
quently, young Ulysses never missed a quarter 
of school which it was possible for him to at- 
tend. But between times Ulysses was kept 
busy at work. The elder Grant not only car- 
ried on the manufacture of leather and worked 
at the trade himself, but also owned and tilled 
quite a large farm. Ulysses detested the trade, 
preferring almost any other labor; but he was 
fond of farming, and of all work in which 
horses were used. His father had, among 
other lands, fifty acres of forest within a mile 
of the village of Georgetown, where the family 
lived. In the fall of the year choppers were 
employed to cut enough wood to last a twelve- 
month. When the young boy was seven or 
eight years of age he began hauling all the 
wood used in the house and shops. He could 
not load it on the wagons, of course, at that 
time, but he could drive, and the choppers 
would load, and some one at the house unload. 
When about eleven years old he was strong 
enough to hold a plow. From that age until 
seventeen he did all the work done with horses, 
such as breaking up the land, furrowing, 
plowing corn and potatoes, bringing in the 
crops wdien harvested, hauling all the wood. 



Ulysses S. Grant 267 

besides attending two or three horses, a cow 
or two, and sawing wood for stoves, and other 
such work, while still attending school. 

General Grant wrote in later years that he 
was compensated for this work by the fact 
that there was never any scolding or punish- 
ment by his parents ; no objection to rational 
enjoyments, such as fishing, going to the creek 
a mile away to swim in summer, taking a 
horse and visiting his grandparents in the ad- 
joining county, fifteen miles off, skating on 
the ice in winter, or taking a horse and sleigh 
when there was snow on the ground. 

In the winter of 1838-39, when Ulysses came 
home from Ripley, ten miles away, to attend 
the Christmas holidays, his father received 
a letter from the Hon. Thomas Morris, then 
the United States senator from Ohio. After 
reading it he turned to the boy, and said, 
"Ulysses, I believe you are going to receive 
the appointment." 

"What appointment?" the boy inquired, 
with astonishment. 

"To West Point; I have applied for it." 

"But I won't go," he said. 

The father replied that he thought he would, 
and Grant, telling the story, says, "I thought 
so too, if he did." 

He really had no objections to going to West 
Point except that he had very exaggerated 
ideas of the preparation necessary to get 



268 Youth of Famous Americans 

through. A young man in the same neighbor- 
hood had been appointed to West Point and 
had been dismissed after a year's trial, and his 
father had forbidden him to come home — he 
was so mortified about his son's failure. 
Naturally all this made young Grant very 
sensitive about the matter. 

The appointment came in due time, and 
young Grant made his preparations for what 
then was as great a journey as it would be now 
to go to Europe. He took passage on a steamer 
at liipley, O., for Pittsburg, about the middle 
of May. Western boats at that day did not 
make regular trips at stated times, but would 
stop anywhere, and for almost any length of 
time, for passengers or freight. Sometimes 
they would be detained two or three days at a 
place after steam was up, the gang planks all 
but one drawn in, and after the time adver- 
tised for starting had expired. On this trip, 
however, great expedition was made, and our 
young traveler reached Pittsburg in about 
three days. From Pittsburg he chose passage 
by the canal to Harrisburg. This gave a bet- 
ter opportunity of enjoying the fine scenery 
than the stage route. Prom Harrisburg to 
Philadelphia there was a railroad, the first 
Grant had ever seen, except the one on which 
he had just crossed the summit of the Alle- 
ghany Mountains, and over which canal boats 
were transported. In traveling by this road 



Ulysses S. Grant 269 

from ITarrisburg' Grant thought that the per- 
fection of rapid transit had been reached. 
They actually traveled at the rate of eighteen 
miles an hour when at full speed, and averaged 
the remarkable speed of twelve miles an hour 
for the entire journey. For the prospective 
soldier this seemed like annihilating space. 
He stopped five days in Philadelphia, saw 
every street in the city, visited Girard College, 
which was then being built, and got a severe 
reproof from home afterward for dallying by 
the way so long. His sojourn in New York 
was shorter, but long enough for him to see 
the city very well. He reported at West Point 
the last of May, and to his great surprise 
passed his examination for admission without 
difficulty. 

A military life had no charms for Grant, 
and he had not the faintest idea of staying 
in the army even if he should be graduated, 
which he scarcely dared to hope. When the 
summer camp broke up, and the time came to 
go back into barracks, he felt as though he 
had been at West Point always, and that if he 
stayed to graduation he would have to remain 
always. Mathematics was very easy to him, 
and he passed his examinations well. But in 
French his standing was very low — so low, in- 
deed, that he said himself if the class had 
been turned the other end foremost he should 
have been near head. During the entire four 



270 Youth of Famous Americans 

years he never succeeded in getting squarely 
at either end of his class in any one study. 

Early in the session of Congress which met 
in December of Grant's first year at West 
Point a bill was discussed abolishing the Mili- 
tary Academy. Ulysses was greatly delighted 
at this. He saw in this an honorable way to 
obtain a discharge, and read the debates with 
much interest, but wdth impatience at the de- 
lay in taking action. The newspaper had 
never had so much interest for him before. 
The bill never passed, and a year later, al- 
though the time hung drearily with him, he 
would have been sorry to have seen it suc- 
ceed. His idea then was to get through the 
course, secure a detail for a few years as 
assistant professor of mathematics at the 
academy, and afterward obtain a permanent 
position as professor in some respectable 
college; but Providence had other work for 
him to do. 

Young Grant had only one visit home dur- 
ing his four years at West Point; that was at 
the middle of his term. He had ten weeks at 
home. His father had bought a young horse, 
that had never been in harness, for his special 
u'se under the saddle during his furlough. 
Most of his time was spent among his old 
schoolmates, and those ten weeks seemed 
shorter than one week at West Point. 

General Grant tells in his Memoirs of two 



Ulysses S. Grant 271 

amusing incidents which knocked the conceit 
out of him soon after his receiving his first 
officer's uniform. He was very proud of his 
clothos when they first came from the tailor, 
and was impatient to have his old schoolmates, 
particularly the girls, see him in uniform. 
Soon after the arrival of the suit he donned it, 
and put off for Cincinnati on horseback. 
While he was riding along a street of that 
city, imagining that everyone was looking at 
him, with a feeling akin to what his own had 
been when he first saw General Scott on re- 
view, a little urchin, bareheaded, barefooted, 
with dirty and ragged pants held up by a 
single gallows, and a shirt that had not 
seen a washtub for weeks, turned to him and 
cried, "Soldier, will you work? No, sir-ee; 
I'll sell my shirt first!" Grant's egotism sub- 
sided. 

The other circumstance occurred at home. 
Opposite his father's house stood the old stage 
tavern. The stableman was a dissipated old 
fellow, but was the village wag. On Grant's 
return he found this old man parading the 
streets and attending in the stable barefooted 
but in a pair of sky-blue nankeen pantaloons 
— just the color of Grant's uniform trousers — 
with a strip of white cotton sheeting sewed 
down the outside seams, in imitation of the 
young officer's. The joke was a huge one in 
the minds of many of the people, but Grant 



272 Youth of Famous Americans 

did not appreciate it, and received such a dis- 
taste for military uniform from these two 
occurrences that he never got over it during 
the rest of his life, and never wore a uniform 
when he could help it. 






1 V '' 



!:''■: ■^■i4#'#ri1^1'f I'll 




ROBERT EDWARD LEE 



ROBERT EDWARD LEE 

"LiGiiT-iiORSE Harry'' Lee was a brilliant 
and daring" character in the War of the Revo- 
lution. Perhaps no other cavalry leader 
equaled him in .dash and sustained ability 
and courage. He was not only a brilliant 
soldier, but a remarkably clear-headed judge 
of events and of public men. It was this same 
"Light-horse Llarry" who uttered that immor- 
tal sentence summing up the career of Wash- 
ington, so oft quoted, "First in war, first in 
peace, and first in the hearts of his fellow- 
citizens." The last word is very often mis- 
quoted, "countrymen," for the sake of 
euphony, no doubt, but the former sentence is 
as Lee pronounced it. 

Robert Edward Lee, who vies with General 
Grant for the place of the great general de- 
veloped in the civil war, undoubtedly received 
his military genius and his fiery zeal from his 
dashing and herbic father; but in moral and 
spiritual nature his mother, who was Anne 
Hill Carpenter, furnished her full share of 
worthy characteristics in balancing the pow- 
ers of her son who was to play so conspicuous 
a part in the most critical epoch of American 
history. 



276 Youth of Famous Americans 

Robert Edward Lee was born January 19, 
1807, in Stratford, Westmoreland County, Va. 
In 1811, by the removal of his father to Alex- 
andria, in Fairfax County, the young boy, 
whose name was to be linked with the name of 
Washington in later years by his marriage, 
was brought into the same atmosphere and 
surroundings as the Father of his Country. 
Col. Henry Lee changed his residence in order 
to afford his eight children better educational 
privileges, and the family were left living in 
Alexandria when "Light-horse Harry," now 
an old veteran, who had been commissioned 
By his friend, President Madison, as major 
general in the army for the invasion of Can- 
ada, marched forth in July, 1812, to the relief 
and support of another friend, the Federalist 
editor Hanson. In the defense of Hanson he 
was wounded by a political mob in Baltimore. 
These wounds gave him much trouble, and 
afterward sent him for five years to the West 
Indies in a vain search for health, and to 
Cumberland Island, off the Georgia coast, 
the estate of his dead comrade. General Na- 
thaniel Greene, to find release from his suffer- 
ing far from his home and his kindred. The 
romantic life of Robert E. Lee's father forms 
a beautiful and brilliant background for the 
quiet and steady virtues of the son. It re- 
minds one of a stream that rises in some high 
mountains and comes dashing and splashing 



Robert Edward Lee 277 

over the bowlders, leaping over the heights in 
great cataracts, whipped white in a mad race 
toward the valleys, but which after the moun- 
tains are cleared, and the foothills and the 
open land appear, flows on strongly, but stead- 
ily, within its banks. So, out of the moun- 
tainous background of the Revolution the 
dashing heroic blood of the Lee family comes 
sparkling and romantic, full of fire and excess 
of energy, until in the veins of Robert Lee 
there is the same steady purpose, the same 
strong courage, the same high honor, but all 
inherited passions and powers kept in splen- 
did subjection by a well-balanced and a highly 
developed moral nature. 

During these years when General Henry Lee 
was in the South searching for health Robert's 
brother, Carter, was at Llarvard, and another 
brother, Sydney Smith, was in the navy, leav- 
ing Robert as the nurse and mainstay of his 
invalid mother; for one of his sisters was an 
invalid also, and one was still younger than 
himself. This was no burden for a boy like 
Robert Lee. He loved his mother with great 
devotion, and she received his homage and 
service with such tender gratitude that to 
serve her was his greatest joy. 

Robert E. Lee was one of the kind of boys 
who never give either their parents or teachers 
cause for trouble or annoyance. His father 
once wrote of him to a friend, "Robert was 



278 Youth of Famous Americans 

always good." And a schoolmaster, who trained 
him in mathematics for West Point, bore the 
same testimony in almost the identical words; 
he was the pride and admiration of his rela- 
tives and friends. The boy grew up beautiful 
in form and face, and with such dignity and 
grace, such self -poise and single-hearted de- 
votion to duty, that he was almost an ideal 
character to those who knew him. 

His choice of a military career had been 
made for him by his inheritance of blood. The 
soldier spirit was born in him. That spirit 
which had flamed forth with such tremendous 
expression in his father could not die out 
without another generation of utterance. It 
is also probable that he was helped or encour- 
aged to make this decision because his mother 
was in limited circumstances, and in this way 
he could relieve her of the necessity of his sup- 
port. One of his biographers suggests that 
he would have succeeded equally well in the 
ministry; for his mere presence was, from his 
earliest youth, a reproof to vice, and there is 
a story of a dissipated host of his who came 
to his young guest's room, without Lee having 
said a word to him of his faults, and confessed 
his sins and promised amendment. But Lee 
was destined to illustrate the Christian vir- 
tues in the military academy, in the camp, and 
on the battlefield, instead of in the pulpit. 

Another of his biographers says : 



Robert Edward Lee 279 

"In person Lee was strikingly handsome. 
He was tall in stature and possessed one of the 
most perfectly proportioned figures the writer 
ever saw. He was so perfectly proportioned 
and so graceful in motion that walking seemed 
to be no exertion to him. His features were 
handsome, and his expression commanding, 
yet kind and winning. In his manner he was 
quiet and modest, but thoroughly self- 
possessed. His whole bearing seemed to be to 
merit the expression of 'antique heroism' ap- 
plied to him by a foreign writer. He was 
courteous and kind to all. He was devotedly 
loved by his friends, and personally he had no 
enemies. He was strong in his friendships, 
and slow to condemn anyone. His moderation 
was most remarkable. He was absolutely free 
from bitterness of feeling, and always spoke 
of his adversaries with kindness and respect. 
He possessed the most perfect command over 
his temper, and it is said that he was never 
seen angry. An oath never passed his lips, 
and he used neither tobacco nor liquors," 

This is certainly high praise, and such as 
could not be uttered concerning many public 
men, and yet there has nothing ever come to 
light concerning Robert E. Lee to throw any 
cloud over this tribute. 

Lee entered West Point in 1825 on an ap- 
pointment secured for him by General Andrew 
Jackson, on whom he had made a good impres- 



280 Youth of Famous Americans 

sion. His hij^h Christian character was beau- 
tifully illustrated throughout his entire career 
at West Point. He had the distinction of re- 
ceiving not a single demerit during the years 
of his course, was punctilious in performing 
his soldierly duties, contracted no vices or un- 
savory habits, and at the last gave proof of his 
diligence and of the clearness and strength 
of his mind by graduating, after a four years' 
course, with the second highest . honors of his 
class. He was at once appointed second lieu- 
tenant of engineers, and hastened home to his 
mother, who was very ill, and who had only 
time to smile upon her darling soldier boy 
before she left him for the final sleep. 

Two years later another woman came into 
Lee's life who continued to give him added 
faith in the nobility and blessedness of woman- 
hood. During his boyhood he had visited, at 
Arlington, the home of Washington Parke 
Custis, and had become very much attached to 
Mary Randolph, a granddaughter of the wife 
of Washington. She was a lovely girl, and a 
great heiress. The attachment was mutual, 
and as Robert Lee came home on his vacation, 
in his cadet uniform, he had completely won 
the heart of the graceful and beautiful young 
mistress of Arlington. In due time the court- 
ship ended in a charming old-fashioned coun- 
try wedding. It was a meeting of rare and 
beautiful natures, and nothing but hai)pi- 



Robert Edward Lee 281 

ness and honor ever flowed forth from that 
union. 

Robert Lee's honeymoon was spent at Ar- 
lington, but it was only a poising before the 
flight, for his chosen profession soon led him 
forth to his noble though stormy life. 



WILLIAM Mckinley 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 

NiLES, Ohio^ claims the honor of being the 
birthplace of our third martyr President, Wil- 
liam McKinlcy. When his biographer visited 
Niles to find out what he could about the em- 
bryo President he ran across an old truaiit 
officer, named Joe Fisher, who pointed out the 
house where McKinley was born, and was full 
of all sorts of reminiscences. "I declare I 
never thought 'Bill' would be President," said 
Joe Fisher. "Little did I suppose as I sat 
fishing with him on Mosquito Creek, with our 
legs dangling from the edge of the bridge, or 
as we caught angleworms to bait our hooks, 
that I was with a coming President. I well 
remember his patience with the hook and line. 
The rest of the boys would get disgusted at 
not getting a bite, and go in bathing, but 'Bill' 
would keep on fishing. When it came time to 
go home he would carry a string of fish, while 
the rest had to be content with their baths. 
Sometimes we would all have good luck, and 
the strings of fish we would carry home sus- 
pended from a pole across our shoulders would 
make the eyes of everyone we passed stick 
'way out." 

When about fifteen years of age McKinley 



286 Youth of Famous Americans 

moved with his parents to Poland, O., which is 
about six miles from Youngstown. There for 
a long time he helped his father days, and 
studied nights. His parents were in comfort- 
able circumstances, though by no means rich. 
William never knew any struggle with grind- 
ing poverty, yet he knew what it was to do 
good solid work for a living. He was fond of 
play and out-of-door sports, and was always 
known as a good-humored, jolly playmate. 

William McKinley's first schooling was in 
the public school at Niles, and the removal to 
Poland was specially for the purpose that 
William and the other children of the family 
might enjoy the advantages of the academy in 
that town. In both the public school and the 
academy he was afterward remembered, not as 
a particularly brilliant scholar, but as a thor- 
oughly good, all-around student, who always 
did his work honestly and well. He already 
had a leaning toward argument and oratory, 
and was prominent in all schoolboy debates. 
At Poland there was a literary society and 
debating club, and William was for a while 
president of this organization. The story is 
told that the boys and girls saved up their 
spending money until they had enough to buy 
a carpet for the meeting room of the club. 
They purchased at a neighboring carpet store 
what they deemed an exceedingly handsome 
fabric. Its ground work was green, and its 



William McKinley 287 

ornamentation gorgeous golden wreaths. The 
society unanimously decided that no boots 
should ever profane that sacred carpet, and 
the girl members, therefore, volunteered to 
knit slippers for all the members to wear. 
Unfortunately, the slippers were not ready for 
the first meeting, and so all the members who 
attended, and the visitors, too, were required 
to put off their shoes from their feet, and 
listen to the debate shod only in stockings. 
The debaters themselves did likewise, and 
young McKinley presided over the meeting in 
his stocking feet. 

At the age of sixteen McKinley went from 
the Poland Academy to enter Allegheny Col- 
lege, at Meadville, Pa. He had only gotten 
well started in his studies there, however, when 
he fell ill and was compelled to return home. 
When his health was restored he found his 
father so embarrassed in his business affairs 
that he could not further aid him, and saw he 
must depend on his own resources. He soon 
secured a district school near Poland, where 
he received twenty-five dollars a month salary 
and boarded around. Much of the time, how- 
ever, he lived at home, walking to and from 
school every day, a distance of several miles, 
in preference to being away from his mother 
at night. His intention was to save up a 
little money and return to college. But just 
then the war came on and changed his career. 



288 Youth of Famous Americans 

At the call of Abraham Lincoln for volun- 
teers, in 1861, one of the first towns to respond 
with a company was Poland, O. Among those 
who composed this company, many of them 
boys, was the young teacher, William McKin- 
ley, then not eighteen years of age, a pale- 
faced, slender youth of scarcely middle height 
but full of boyish energy and vim. 

General Fremont inspected and mustered in 
the recruits. He examined young McKinley, 
pounded his chest, looked into his eyes, and 
said, "You'll do." That was perhaps the 
proudest moment William had ever known, to 
be thus treated by the famous "Pathfinder" of 
whose thrilling adventures he had often read 
with unbounded admiration. 

For many months William McKinley car- 
ried a musket in the ranks. He was a good 
soldier, intelligently obedient to his superior 
ofiicers, and genial and generous to his com- 
rades. He showed himself from the first an 
ardent and faithful soldier, and went through 
the trying West Virginia campaign in a man- 
ner to attract the favorable attention of his 
ofiicers. As a result, on April 19, 1862, he was 
appointed commissary sergeant to the regi- 
ment — a responsible and trying position for 
the ten-months soldier and youth of nineteen. 
That he was competent to fill the duties of the 
position with skill and ability the future 
clearly showed. 



William McKinley 289 

But the young school-teacher soldier who 
was made a sergeant in West Virginia won a 
commission at Antietam. This he did by a 
striking act of coolness and daring, and in 
the practical method which was conspicuous 
throughout his subsequent career. There is 
always a mob of faint hearts in the rear of a 
line of battle, who seek to shirk their duty. 
If these men would not fight they might be 
otherwise employed. McKinley knew that the 
soldiers who had toiled and struggled under a 
burning sun, on the scorching line of battle, 
would be very glad to receive some of the 
creature comforts of ife. He therefore 
pressed into service som ; of these stragglers, 
whom he set to making coffee; then, loading 
up a couple of wagons, he started with his 
mule teams for the line of battle. 

Ex-President Hayes, who was McKinley's 
colonel, a quarter of a century after the war 
wrote his estimate of McKinley in these boyish 
days when he was a soldier under him: 

"Rather more than thirty years ago I first 
made the acquaintance of Major McKinley. 
He was then a boy — he had just passed the age 
of seventeen. He had before that taught 
school, and was coming from an academy to 
the camp. He with me entered upon a new, 
strange life — a soldier's life in the time of 
actual war. 

Young as he was, we soon found that in 
19 



290 Youth of Famous Americans 

business, executive ability, young McKinley 
was a man of rare capacity, of unusual and 
unsurpassed capacity, especially for a boy of 
his age. When battles were fought, or service 
was to be performed in warlike things, he al- 
ways took his place. The night was never too 
dark; the weather was never too cold; there 
was no sleet, or storm, or hail, or snow, or 
rain in the way of his prompt and efficient 
performance of every duty. 

"When I became commander of the regi- 
ment he soon came to be upon my staff, and he 
remained upon my staff for one or two years, 
so that I did literally know him like a book, 
and loved him like a .brother." 

Farther on, in the same address, ex-Presi- 
dent Hayes describes McKinley's conduct on 
the battlefield at Antietam : 

"That battle began at daylight. Before day- 
light men were in the ranks and preparing 
for it. Without breakfast, without coffee, they 
went into the fight, and it continued until 
after the sun had set. Early in the afternoon, 
naturally enough, with the exertion required 
of the men, they were famished and thirsty 
and to some extent broken in spirit. The com- 
missary department of that brigade was under 
Sergeant McKinley's administration and per- 
sonal supervision. From his hands every man 
in the regiment was served with hot coffee and 
warm meats, a thing that had never occurred 



William McKinley 291 

under similar circumstances in any other army 
in the world. He passed under fire and de- 
livered with his own hands these things 
so essential for the men for whom he was 
laboring. 

"Coming to Ohio and recovering from 
wounds, I called upon Governor Tod and told 
him this incident. With the emphasis that 
distinguished that great war governor he said, 
'Let McKinley be promoted from sergeant to 
lieutenant,' and, that I might not forget, he 
requested me to put it upon the roster of the 
regiment, which I did, and McKinley was pro- 
moted. As was the case, perhaps, with very 
many soldiers, I did not keep a diary regu- 
larly from day to day, but I kept notes of 
what was transpiring. When I knew that I 
was to come here it occurred to me to open the 
old notebook of that period and see what it 
contained, and I found this entry : 

"'Saturday, December 13, 1862.— Our new 
second lieutenant, McKinley, returned to-day 
—an exceedingly bright, intelligent, and gen- 
tlemanly young officer. He promises to be one 
of the best.' 

"He has kept the promise in every sense of 
the word." 

Another writer has given us a brief but 
comprehensive picture of the way in which 
McKinley won his next promotion. It was at 
the battle of Winchester. The writer says: 



292 Youth of Famous Americans 

"Just now it was discovered that one of 
the regiments was still in the orchard where 
posted at the beginning of the battle. General 
Hayes, turning to Lieutenant McKinley, di- 
rected him to go for and bring away this regi- 
ment if it had not already fallen. McKinley 
turned his horse, and, keenly spurring it, 
pushed it at a fierce gallop obliquely toward 
the advancing enemy. A sad look came over 
Hayes's face as he saw this young, gallant 
boy pushing rapidly forward to almost certain 
death. McKinley was much loved in the com- 
mand — a mere boy at the beginning of the war, 
who had left his college, his expectation for 
the future, all, everything, willing to serve his 
country and his flag in their dire need. With 
wonderful force of character, then, true, pure, 
noble, and brave, he had, by reason of his 
ability and wonderful power with men even 
much older than himself, risen from the ranks 
to become a noted staff officer; and later was 
called to the staff of General Crook, and so on 
up to General Hancock's headquarters; and 
for his many brave acts and conspicuous 
gallantry was by President Lincoln brevetted 
major." 

It was in such a school that McKinley passed 
his youth and climbed upward and onward 
toward manhood and the noble life he was to 
live. 




FRANCES WILLARD 



FRANCES WILLARD 

Frances Willard^ the most famous temper- 
ance leader the world has ever known, was 
born September 28, 1839, in Churchville, Mon- 
roe County, N. Y., some fourteen miles from 
Kochester. A little later the family removed 
to Oberlin, O., and at the age of three or four 
her father used to stand her up on a chair and 
have her sing for guests. Frances remembered 
in later life that when the father asked her to 
sing the song was always this: 

"They called me blue-eyed Mary when friends and 

fortune smiled, 
But O, how fortunes vary! I now am sorrow's child. 
Kind sir, then take these posies ; they are fading like 

my youth, 
But never like these roses shall wither Mary's truth." 

But the mother was a born reformer, and 
whenever she stood her daughter up to speak 
it was a more warlike selection. At ten years 
of age her favorite recitation began with these 
lines : 

"O sacred Truth '. Thy triumph ceased a while. 
And Hope, thy sister, ceased like thee to smile, 
When leagued oppression poured to northern wars 
Her whiskered pandours and her fierce hussars." 



296 Youth of Famous Americans 

When Frances was seven years old the fam- 
ily removed to a farm in Wisconsin, and that 
was the home of the future orator and temper- 
ance leader until she was nineteen. There 
was no railroad, and they put their household 
goods into canvas-backed prairie schooners, 
the father driving one, the mother one, and 
the older brother, Oliver, then twelve years 
old, driving the third. It took them three 
weeks to reach their destination. 

The spirit of the future early showed itself 
in the moral attitude of the young girl. One 
day when the little girls were having a good 
time out in the woods by the river, three 
neighbor boys came along hunting for birds' 
nests. "But you mustn't carry any away!" 
said the girls, greatly stirred. "You may. climb 
the trees and look, if you want to see the eggs 
or little ones, but you can't hurt a birdie, big 
or little, in our pasture." The boys said their 
mother told them the same thing, and they 
only wanted to "look," so the girls showed 
them under the leafy covert some of the brown 
thrush's housekeeping, and a robin's, too, and 
then they told them that since they were such 
kind boys, and didn't want to kill the pretty 
creatures God had made, and since they had 
just come West and didn't know all the ways 
they had out there, they would help them to 
"drown out a gopher," and the boys might have 
it if they wanted to. 



Frances Willard 297 

Two of the boys were greatly delighted, and 
their eyes fairly danced, but the third, a 
thoughtful little fellow, got home on the girls 
very shrewdly by inquiring, "But why do you 
drown out a gopher^ Is that a kind thing to 
do ?" This drew out a long argument from the 
young girl who, in after days, was to sway 
the multitudes with her eloquence. 

In her Glimpses of Fifty Years, Miss Wil- 
lard has given many interesting pictures of 
girl life at that day on a Western farm. Here 
is one: 

"Another rich experience that came to my 
sister and me was following the 'breaking- 
plow' in spring. Just after the prairie fire had 
done its work, and the great field was black 
with the carpet it had spread, came the huge 
plow, three times as large as that generally 
used, with which the virgin soil was to be 
turned upward to the sun. Nowadays in the 
far West, that keeps going farther every year, 
they use steam plows. Just think of a loco- 
motive out in the boundless prairie, going so 
fast and far that one wouldn't dare tell how 
many miles it gets over in a day! But away 
back in the forties and fifties, so distant from 
these wonderful eighties in which we live, we 
thought that nothing could go beyond the 
huge plow, with steel 'mold-board' so bright 
that you could see you face in it; 'beam' so 
long that we two girls could sit upon it for a 



298 Youth of Famous Americans 

ride and have space for half a dozen more; 
formidable 'colter' — a sharp, knife-like steel 
that went before the plowshare to cut the thick 
sod — and eight great, branch-horned oxen 
sturdily pulling all this, while one man held 
the plow by its strong curving handles, and 
another cracked a whip with lash so long 
it reached the heads of the head oxen away 
at the front. As father generally held the 
plow, and Oliver, who was very kind to ani- 
mals, the whip, Mary and I used to enjoy run- 
ning along and balancing ourselves on the 
great black furrow, as it curved over from the 
polished mold-board and lay there smooth and 
even as a plank. Sometimes the plow would 
run against a snag in the shape of a big 'red- 
root;' for, strange to say, the prairie soil, 
where no tree was in sight, had roots, some- 
times as large as a man's arm, stretching along 
under ground. Then would come a cheery 
'Get up. Bill! Halloa there, Bright! Now's 
your time, Brindle!' The great whip would 
crack above their heads; the giant creatures 
would bend to the yoke; 'snap' would go the 
redroot and smooth would turn the splendid 
furrow with home and school and civilization 
gleaming from its broad face, and happy chil- 
dren skipping, barefooted, along its new-laid 
floor. These were 'great times' indeed! As 
the sun climbed higher and the day grew 
warm^ we would go to the house, and com- 



Frances Willard 299 

pound a pail of 'harvest drink,' as father 
called it, who never permitted any kind of 
alcoholic liquor in his fields or at his barn- 
raisings. Water, molasses, and ginger were its 
ingredients, and the thirsty toilers, taking it 
from a tin dipper, declared it 'good enough 
to set before a king.' 

"Later on we girls were fitted out with bags 
of corn, of beans, onion, turnip, or beet seed, 
which we tied around our waists, as, taking 
hoe in hand, we helped do the planting, not as 
work, but 'just for fun,' leaving oif whenever 
we grew tired. We 'rode the horse' for Oliver 
when he 'cultivated corn ;' held trees for father 
when he planted new ones, which he did by 
scores each spring; watched him at 'grafting 
time' and learned about 'scions' and 'seed- 
lings;' had our own little garden beds of flow- 
ers and vegetables, and thought no blossoms 
ever were so fair or dishes so toothsome as 
those raised by our own hands. Once when I 
was weeding onions with my father I pulled 
out, along with the grass, a good-sized snake 
by the tail, after which I was less diligent in 
that department of industry. The flower gar- 
den was a delight to people for miles around, 
with its wealth of rare shrubs, roses, tulips, 
and clambering vines which mother and her 
daughters trained over the rambling cottage 
until it looked like some great arbor. I had 
a seat in the tall black oak near the front gate, 



300 Youth of Famous Americans 

where I could read and write quite hidden 
from view. I had a box with lid and hinges, 
fastened beside me, where I kept my sketches 
and books, whence the 'general public' was 
warned off by the words painted in large black 
letters on a board nailed to the tree below: 
'The Eagle's Nest, Beware!' Mary had her 
own smaller tree, near by, similarly fitted up." 

While Frances Willard's father was a good 
man, and a man of intelligence and character, 
it still remains .true that the great personality 
in that Wisconsin farmhouse was the mother. 
She was a woman of rare spiritual nature. 
Frances Willard used to say that her mother's 
prayers and singing always made her children 
glad. Frances was afraid of thunder and 
lightning, and she writes: "In the wild thun- 
derstorms of that new West I was wont to hide 
my face upon her knee, and say, 'Sing "Rock 
of Ages." ' Somehow I was never afraid while 
mother's soul was lifted up to God." 

This rare mother was always looking out 
for the future for her children. She held them 
to strict accountability in regard to their man- 
ners. Far out on a frontier farm she made 
her children walk with books upon their head 
frequently, so as to learn to carry themselves 
well, and she would go with them through the 
correct manner of giving and receiving intro- 
ductions. Sometimes the children would pro- 
test and say, "There is nobody to be intro- 



Frances Willard 301 

duced." The wise mother would reply, with 
her cheerful smile, "But there will be." 

Frances Willard was greatly distressed when 
her brother Oliver went away to college, and 
the thing that oppressed her more than any- 
thing else was that she could not go and be 
educated at the same place. As she looked 
after him through her tears she queried, "Does 
God want families to be broken up this way? 
I don't believe he does, and it would be far 
better for Oliver, and for me, too, if we had 
gone together." 

Frances Willard always said her girlhood 
ceased the day she was made to put on the 
feminine clothes which fashion required. The 
description in her own words is too good for 
anyone else to undertake to paraphrase it. 
When she was fifty years of age she wrote 
about it: 

"No girl went through a harder experience 
than I, when my free, out-of-door life had to 
cease, and the long skirts and clubbed-up hair 
spiked with hairpins had to be endured. The 
half of that downheartedness has never been 
told and never can be. I always believed that 
if I had been let alone and allowed as a 
woman what I had as a girl, a free life in the 
country, where a human being might grow, 
body and soul, as a tree grows, I would have 
been 'ten times more of a person,' every way. 
Mine was a nature hard to tame, and I cried 



302 Youth of Famous Americans 

long and loud when I found I could never 
again race and range about with freedom. I 
had delighted in my short hair and nice round 
hat, or comfortable 'Shaker bonnet/ but now 
I was to be 'choked with ribbons' when I went 
into the open air the rest of my days. Some- 
thing like the following was the 'state of mind' 
that I revealed to my journal about this time : 
" 'This is my birthday and the date of my 
martyrdom. Mother insists that at last I must 
have my hair "done up woman-fashion." She 
says she can hardly forgive herself for letting 
me "run wild" so long. We've had a great 
time over it all, and here I sit like another 
Samson "shorn of my strength." That figure 
won't do, though, for the greatest trouble with 
me is that I never shall be shorn again. My 
"back" hair is twisted up like a corkscrew; I 
carry eighteen hairpins; my head aches miser- 
ably ; my feet are entangled in the skirt of my 
hateful new gown. I can never jump over a 
fence again, so long as I live. As for chasing 
the sheep, down in the shady pasture, it's out 
of the question, and to climb to my "Eagle's- 
nest" seat in the big bur oak would ruin this 
new frock beyond repair. Altogether, I recog- 
nize the fact that my "occupation's gone." ' " 



AVJGl 



1 1902 



